18th-century Artist Quotes

William Blake

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Hokusai

Jacques-Louis David

Caspar David Friedrich

Joshua Reynolds

John Constable

We love a genius for what he leaves and mourn him for what he takes away

Thomas Gainsborough

When Troy was built, you recollect I dabbled as an Architect; A very sorry one, you'll say, But worse since then have come in play, And of the art I've understood Enough, to do more harm than good...

There is no game of chance more hazardous than marriage.

Jacques-Louis David

What a business is this of a portrait painter! You bring him a potato and expect he will paint you a peach.

Let us strive to have eyes that see well, that see with sagacity: that is all I ask. If you want to see that leg as ugly, I know that there will be cause for you to do so, but I will tell you, "Take my eyes and you will see it as beautiful."

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.

Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken by it.

James Northcote

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

Caspar David Friedrich

If men would only take the chances of doing right because it is right, instead of the immediate certainty of the advantage of doing wrong, how much happier would their lives be.

Benjamin Haydon

An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.

Joshua Reynolds

Nature has no tune: but Imagination has! Nature has no supernatural & dissolves: Imagination is Eternity.

And see the rivers how they run Through woods and meads, in shade and sun, Sometimes swift, sometimes slow, Wave succeeding wave, they go A various journey to the deep, Like human life to endless sleep!

Turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy.

Minute and elaborately finished pictures never strongly impress the mind, and are but mere curiosities to gratify persons insensible to higher excellencies.

Since the age of six I have had the habit of sketching forms of objects. Although from about fifty I have often published my pictorial works, before the seventieth year none is worthy.

You're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star.

If I prove extravagant, I shall be more so from ignorance than willfulness. I am not wholly insensible to the pleasures of the world, therefore shall not be governed entirely by necessity; but I flatter myself, at least, in being able to restrain their gratification within due bonds.

Washington Allston

Pain is the necessary contrast to pleasure; it ushers us into existence or consciousness: it alone is capable of exciting the organs into activity: it is the compassion and the guardian of human life.

F I was an Optician, - I think that I would almost as willingly - Waltz blindfold and barefoot among 9 Red hot Ploughshares laid at unequal distances from each other, - as have All my Telescopes tried by that truly troublesome test a Fixed Star.

William Kitchiner

I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.

Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse