Michelangelo had impressed him deeply. In later days he never lost an opportunity of advising students to sit at the feet of the great master, and the influence of the work in the Sistine Chapel may be noted in the famous picture of Mrs. Siddons, now to be seen in the Dulwich Gallery. Ludovico Caracci and Guido had given him hints that were of infinite value in the moulding of his technique; for colour he had gone to Titian, Tintoretto, and Rubens, of whom the last named was beginning to lose his appeal in the last years of Reynolds' life. Sir Joshua had a supreme facility for taking from every artist the best that was in him, melting it in the crucible of his own thought, and applying the product to his pictures. There is no doubt that the sixteenth-century Venetians impressed Reynolds as much as they impressed Ruskin at a later date, but in the middle of the eighteenth century the school of Bologna was in the ascendant in England, and it is through Reynolds' actions rather than his words that we see how Venice had influenced him. Sir Walter Armstrong thinks that Reynolds lived well rather than wisely in Italy, and that when he came back to town his wild oats were all sown, but it is hard to find any justification for the belief that Reynolds was at any time of his life a free liver. The pleasures of the table may have claimed him when he reached middle age; indeed, Dr. Johnson said to him on one occasion, "You complain about the tea I drink, but I do not count the glasses you empty," or words to that effect. As far as other forms of dissipation go, there is no evidence that Reynolds was ever a victim to them. He was always perfect master of his self-control, and when the years had toned down certain faults of thought and manner, he became mellowed, like old wine, and not less stimulating. Students of the famous discourses that Sir Joshua addressed annually to the Royal Academy after he became first President of the new institution, may be justified if they suspect that the great painter adopted the same rule in dealing with his students that skilled musical composers use when dealing with their pupils. A musican knows that the laws of harmony and counterpoint are not fixed, that the musical horizon widens year by year, and that rules may often be disregarded by a composer who has something to say; but, in order that composition may grow from some definite form, it is necessary that the rules should be mastered before they are disregarded. So in dealing with things of art, Reynolds said much to his audience that his own practice did not bear out. He would not hint at his own preferences quite so frankly as his canvases did and it is not at all unlikely that he realised as well as we do, that while students, like the poor, are always with us, great artists are few and far between, and will survive all academic limitations.