ABSTRACT
Sir E. J. Poynter, first baronet and President of the Royal Academy, was one of the most influential artists of his time; not by virtue of his painting, but as a result of the various positions of power he occupied in the art-teaching world. Nature’s truths are so many, so subtle, and so various, that it requires that bom insight of an artist which is his greatest gift to discover but a part of them; and even having the gift, his whole life is spent in acquiring that knowledge, for not only does he day by day discover some new beauty to which he was blind before, but he finds in doing so how little he really knows. The highest possible forms of pictorial art have as their object the representation of the human form and face in all their varied aspects of tragic and joyful expression.
