The artist and his model

“Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.”
David L. Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time

The Artist and His Model – Alexei Harlamoff, 1875