“Delighted,” he said. “Delighted to find favour in the eyes of a colleague. If a man knows a bit about what goes on under the epidermis, that does no harm either. In other words, if he can paint a little below the surface, and stands in another relation to nature than just the lyrical, so to say. An artist who is a doctor, physiologist, and anatomist on the side, and has his own little way of thinking about the under sides of things⁠—it all comes in handy too, it gives you the pas , say what you like. That birthday suit there is painted with science, it is organically correct, you can examine it under the microscope. You can see not only the horny and mucous strata of the epidermis, but I’ve suggested the texture of the corium underneath, with the oil- and sweat-glands, the blood-vessels and tubercles⁠—and then under that still the layer of fat, the upholstering, you know, full of oil ducts, the underpinning of the lovely female form. What is in your mind as you work runs into your hand and has its influence⁠—it isn’t really there, and yet somehow or other it is, and that is what gives the lifelike effect.”