However, the usual and most dangerous error is on the side of minuteness, and, therefore, I think caution most necessary where most have failed.  The general idea constitutes real excellence.  All smaller things, however perfect in their way, are to be sacrificed without mercy to the greater.  The painter will not inquire what things may be admitted without much censure.  He will not think it enough to show that they may be there; he will show that they must be there, that their absence would render his picture maimed and defective.

Thus, though to the principal group a second or third be added, and a second and third mass of light, care must be yet taken that these subordinate actions and lights, neither each in particular, nor all together, come into any degree of competition with the principal; they should make a part of that whole which would be imperfect without them.  To every part of painting this rule may be applied.  Even in portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the general air than in observing the effect similitude of every feature.

Thus figures must have a ground whereon to stand; they must be clothed, there must be a background, there must be light and shadow; but none of these ought to appear to have taken up any part of the artist’s attention.  They should be so managed as not even to catch that of the spectator.  We know well enough, when we analyse a piece, the difficulty and the subtlety with which an artist adjusts the background, drapery, and masses of light; we know that a considerable part of the grace and effect of his picture depends upon them; but this art is so much concealed, even to a judicious eye, that no remains of any of these subordinate parts occur to memory when the picture is not present.

The great end of the art is to strike the imagination.  The painter is, therefore, to make no ostentation of the means by which this is done; the spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom.  An inferior artist is unwilling that any part of his industry should be lost upon the spectator.  He takes as much pains to discover, as the greater artist does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate assiduity.  In works of the lower kind everything appears studied and encumbered; it is all boastful art and open affectation.  The ignorant often part from such pictures with wonder in their mouths, and indifference in their hearts.

But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain and keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in pursuing the grandeur of his design.