Painting

“Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast And those who paint 'em truest praise 'em most.”

“In general, just as painters in working from models constantly gaze at their exemplar and thus strive to transfer the expression of the original to their own artistry, so too he who is anxious to make himself perfect in all the kinds of virtue must gaze upon the lives of the saints as upon statues, so to speak, that move and act, and must make their excellence his own by imitation.”

“As certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio.”

“From the mingled strength of shade and lightHome to our hearts the truth from which they spring.”

“Matisse began to exploit the more abstract, and... vibrant, oppositions of red-green. ...[T]he properties of colour itself, and the interactions of colour with their power to create light, instead of reproducing the effect of light, were the basis of Matisse's mature art. Colour no longer stood for, or symbolized, anything external to painting itself; it was colour as colour.”

“If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer.”

“What avails, then, the folly of the painter, who from sinful love of gain depicts that which should not be depicted—that is, with his polluted hands he tries to fashion that which should only be believed in the heart and confessed with the mouth? He makes an image and calls it Christ.”

“If anyone shall endeavor to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colors which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!”

“A picture is a poem without words.”

“Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.”

“Hard features every bungler can command:To draw true beauty shows a master's hand.”

“Paint me as I am," said Cromwell, Less than truth my soul abhors.”

“I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with\xa0delight.”

“: My painting will have to tell many stories. It should be large enough to hold everything. Everything, all the people. There must be a hundred of them. I will work like the spider I saw this morning building its web.First it finds an anchoring point. Here, the heart of my web.”

“A flattering painter, who made it his careTo draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.”

“One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.”

“Delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.”

“He that seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius: as he must needs paint for other minds, and not for his own.”

“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”

“The form of my painting is the content.”

“The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals.”

“The picture that approaches sculpture nearestIs the best picture.”

“Vain is the hope by colouring to displayWith pencils dipt in dull terrestrial dyes.”

“Painting responded to the plague-darkened vision of the human condition provoked by repeated exposure to sudden, inexplicable death. Tuscan painters reacted against Giotto's serenity, preferring sterner, hieratic portrayals of religious scenes and figures. The "Dance of Death" became a common theme for art; and several other macabre motifs entered the European repertory.”

“I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.”

“I mix them with my brains, sir.”

“You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!”

“He best can paint them who shall feel them most.”

“Lely on animated canvas stoleThe sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.”

“The fellow mixes blood with his colors.”

“Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.”

“If it is the love of that which your work represents — if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you — if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you — if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.”

“Look here, upon this picture, and on this.”

“What demi-godHath come so near creation?”

“I will say of it,Lives in these touches, livelier than life.”

“The painting is almost the natural man:Ev'n such as they give out.”

“Wrought he not well that painted it? He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he's but a filthy piece of work.”

“With hue like that when some great painter dipsHis pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.”

“There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.”

“But who can paintAmid its gay creation, hues like hers?”

“They dropped into the yolk of an egg the milk that flows from the leaf of a young fig-tree, with which, instead of water, gum or gumdragant, they mixed their last layer of colours.”

“The ornamental borders framing the miniature paintings seem to be inspired by the decorative designs on the Mughal carpets.”

“I would I were a painter, for the sakeInto that mountain mystery.”