The ‘starving artist,’ as a figure, does not starve merely because their work does not sell, so that they do not have enough to eat, although that might happen to be the case, but because some special ardor for truth, which can only be satisfied through a mode of expression that is at once personal and impersonal, and that we have given the name ‘art,’ has afflicted them so thoroughly that, were it to manifest physically, it would lend to their appearance, wherever they might be encountered, the wideness of eye and hollowness of cheek that we associate with the need for sustenance.