John Constable Short Quotes

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A self-taught painter is one taught by a very ignorant person.

John Constable
He seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent, and so airy.

John Constable
The sky is the source of light in Nature and it governs everything.

John Constable
A gentleman's park—is my aversion. It is not beauty because it is not nature.
Of Fonthill

John Constable
No man who can do any one thing well will be able to any different thing equally well.

John Constable
Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher about humanity.

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

John Constable
Only think that I am now writing in a room full of Claudes... almost of the summit of my earthly ambitions.

John Constable
In Claude's landscape all is lovely—all amiable—all is amenity and repose;—the calm sunshine of the heart.

John Constable
When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.

John Constable
It is the soul that sees; the outward eyes
Present the object, but the Mind descries.
We see nothing till we truly understand it.

John Constable
But You know Landscape is my mistress — 't is to her that I look for fame — and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.

John Constable
It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.

John Constable
The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world.

John Constable
It is always my endeavour however in making a picture that it should be without a companion in the world. At least such should be a painters ambition.

John Constable
The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork…those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful.

John Constable
I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass.

John Constable
My observations on clouds and skies are on scraps and bits of paper, and I have never yet put them together so as to form a lecture, which I shall do.... next summer.

John Constable
My art flatters nobody by imitation, it courts nobody by smoothness, nobody by petitelieness without either fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee; how then can I hope to be popular?

John Constable
There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

John Constable
Sept. 6 th, 1822, looking S. E. — 12 to 1 o'clock, fresh and bright, between showers — much the look of rain all the morning, but very fine and grand all the afternoon and evening.

John Constable
A sketch will not serve more than one state of mind & will not serve to drink at again & again — in a sketch there is nothing but the one state of mind — that which you were in at the time.

John Constable