Painter Quotes

By contemplation I swear,
By the beginning of speech,
By the flight of a dove from the mind.
A word is in the cage

Who is this Monet whose name sounds just like mine and is taking advantage of my notoriety?

Remark recorded by Théodore Duret at the Paris Salon of 1865

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

Of Caravaggio:

This man has come into the world to destroy painting.

Nicolas Poussin

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

Pierre Auguste Renoir

How happy a thing were a wedding,
And a bedding,
If a man might purchase a wife
For a twelvemonth and a day

Re Arkansas: Its airs—just breathe them, and they will make you snort like a horse.

Thomas B. Thorpe

The reason for the survival of the award system is purely commercial.

There is no game of chance more hazardous than marriage.

Jacques-Louis David

I am who I am today because of the love and happiness you have brought into my life. I love and adore you the best.

To Erin

Vincent Golshani

It isn't enough to have the eyes of a gazelle... you also need the claws of a cat in order to capture your bird alive and play with it before you eat it, and so join its life to yours. This is the mystery of painting.

I wanted to get it all down, maybe out of my system. I wanted to be able to say, Everything's possible-if you believe and can get excited.

The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life.

Wassily Kandinsky

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

A cobbler should not judge above his last.

There are Six Essentials in painting. The first is called spirit; the second, rhythm; the third, thought; the fourth, scenery; the fifth, the brush; and the last is the ink

The new is very ancient, one might almost say that it is always the most ancient thing there is.

Eugène Delacroix

Les Enfants Terribles [The Terrible Children].

I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else.

Giorgio Morandi

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Upon first seeing a daguerreotype:

From today painting is dead.

Just as I came out into the rue, an omnibus came by - pas complet, so I sprang in, without that prayer and fasting which should chasten the mind before risking it in a French omnibus.

If the artist is not to lose much of his ancient purpose he may have to plunder the popular arts to recover the imagery which is his rightful inheritance.

Richard Hamilton (artist)

The greatest travelers have not gone beyond the limits of their own world; they have trodden the paths of their own souls, of good and evil, of morality and redemption.

Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's wall, even if only for a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.

Rabih Alameddine