"In Bath his general practice was in portraiture, in which he had peculiar excellence and frequently produced pictures of surprising resemblance and perfection. Likeness alone was all he avowed to aim at; from this concentration it must often have happened that although his pictures were exactly like and to the parties for whom they were painted, and their families, highly satisfactory at the time whilst the prevailing modes were daily seen and the friends approved and beloved in them, yet the satisfaction arising from this resemblance was lessening daily as the fleeting fashions varied, and were changing from time to time."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Gainsborough