Artistry

The following quote, from Little Dorrit, describes Daniel Doyce, one of the book's major heroes. He is an inventor. I marked the quote, though, because I find it a fairly acute defintion of an artist (at least, as I understand it):

...though a plain man, [he] had been too much accustomed to combine what was original and daring in conception with what was patient and minute in execution, to be by any means an ordinary man.