Looking at their landscapes, I sometimes think that English artists care less for getting the finest point of view than getting the most comfortable place to pitch their easel and camp-stool. And usually they take professional models for the figure, as these are easiest to get. They have not the enterprise of Giovanni di Bologna in asking an entire stranger to be sculptured in the nude. The _Rape of the Sabines_ shows how wise he was in asking Ginori. Winckelmann said that he saw people in real life, who were more beautiful than Guido’s _Archangel_ or Raphael’s _Galatea_. And if our artists took the trouble, they might see people here in England, who are more beautiful than anything in modern art. One afternoon I saw a bather walking up the sands; and he caught sight of something in the distance, and stopped abruptly, putting up his hand to shade his eyes. If I could have fixed him there in gilded bronze, he might have faced the _Apoxyomenos_ or any other figure by Lysippos. When artists find their models fall short of their ideals, they usually begin idealizing them. And when the models are Italians, this answers very well, as the Italians are not unlike the ancient Greeks in build, and the ancient Greeks have given most artists their ideals. But when the models are English, it does not do at all, the English being generally built another way. For one thing, the ilio-femoral ligament is not so short, and an Englishman can therefore straighten out his back to an extent that few Italians can, and no Greeks ever could. Think of the _Doryphoros_ and the _Diadumenos_ being measured for frock-coats, and the amount of padding that the tailor would have to put in the small of the back to make their coats look right. The professional models in England used mostly to be Italians; but now there are many Jews among them, and a few of other races. A model once explained to me, “Here I am of the Latin race: there I am Slav,” first pointing towards the buttocks and then towards the chest. We must have thoroughbred English models, if we want real English art; but the right people are seldom willing to endure the strain of staying motionless for fifty minutes at a time, though some of the professional models can do that five or six times in a day. The only chance would be with snap-shots or time-studies, taking only a few minutes each. In looking at the students’ work at the National Competitions of Art Schools, I always feel that some schools treat their students rather badly in giving them such wretched models. It must be discouraging to have to draw these people who are not worth drawing, though not so great a waste of time as drawing plaster casts and other easy things. You set beginners to shoot snipe, reckoning that this will teach them to shoot anything; and you should likewise start beginners at the life-class.