Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay, copper or concrete, and may incorporate multiple other materials including sand, clay, paper, gold leaf as well as objects.

Quotes are listed alphabetically by author

• Mughal painting is a particular style of South Asian painting, generally confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums, which emerged from Persian miniature painting, with Indian Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist influences, and developed largely in the court of the Mughal Empire (16th - 19th centuries), and later spread to other Indian courts, both Muslim and Hindu, and later Sikh.
  • Sana Mahmoud Abbasi in: A Comparison Study between Rajput & Mughal Indian Miniature Paintings Volume : 2, Issue : 2, February 2013, Indian Journal of Research

• Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast
  And those who paint 'em truest praise 'em most.
  • Joseph Addison, The Campaign, last line. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• 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.
  • Basil of Caesarea vol. 1, p. 17, Letters as translated by R. Deferrari (1926)

• As certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio.
  • Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, Emerson. Phrase found also in Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Chapter XII. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• In the Seljuk period, figurative themes of Turco-Mongol character are some what apparent in all the minor arts in both Iran and Iraq. The true Persian miniature, however, which is indisputably the most perfect figurative art on the soil of Islam, did not come into the world until after the conquest of Iran by the Mongols, and more precisely under the rule of the Īl-Khāns (1256). It is modeled upon Chinese painting with its perfect blend of calligraphy and illustration...The link between writing and image remains fundamental to Persian miniatures, which, belongs, as a whole, to the art of books; all the famous miniaturists were calligraphers before becoming painters.
  • Titus Burckhard in: Art of Islam: Language and Meaning, World Wisdom, Inc, 2009, P.37

• From the mingled strength of shade and light
  A new creation rises to my sight,
  Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow,
  So warm with light his blended colors glow.
  * * * * * *
  The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring
  Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring.
  • Lord Byron, Monody on the death of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan, Stanza 3. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Pisarro explained the Neo-Impressionist theories to his dealer Durand-Ruel in a letter written towards the end of 1886. He stressed the importance of Seurat's role as inventor of the theory, and described the new function of colour, which replaced the mechanical mixtures of pigments with optical mixtures, where colours partially fused in the spectator's eye. The component parts of each optical colour mixture were to be painted in separate touches so that they retained their colour purity. When colours were mixed on the palette, they could only be combined with close neighbors on the colour circle, so as to avoid excessive dulling of the hues. Pissaro noted that the great colour theorists who had influenced Seurat's thinking were Chevreul, the Scott Maxwell, and the American Ogden Rood. Optical colour mixtures, they argued, were more luminous than mixed pigments.
  • Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1982) p. 138.

• Lautrec was greatly influenced by the techniques, style and subject matter of Degas, who was a close neighbor between 1887 and 1891. ...Like Degas, Lautrec experimented with painting with turpentine which was called peinture à l'essence. In Degas' method, oil was drawn out of his colours by placing them on blotting paper. Then the chalky paint was diluted with turpentine and applied like a wash to his support. Because the turpentine spirit evaporated quickly, the colours dried rapidly, so that the paint surface could be reworked and built up without enormous delays. Unlike paint applied thinly in glazes, with this technique the colour dries mat, and has a chalky surface only thinly and sparely coloured.
  • Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1982) p. 166.

• For Matisse in particular it often served to separate areas of contrasting colour, assisting in the vibrant activation of such juxtaposed blocks. While the Impressionist use of colour contrasts had concentrated mainly on the complimentary yellow and violet-blue pair, because these most aptly imitated the effects of sunlight and shadow in nature, Matisse shifted to the red-green complementaries. This pair creates the greatest optical vibration when juxtaposed because the two colours are closest in tone of any on the colour circle. As the eye tires of reading, say, the red as dominant, the green at once appears to come forward and dominate. This vacillation of the eye between the two colours vying for dominance sets up an optical vibration, which enhances the colour properties of each simultaneously. By focusing upon the red-green pair—which Matisse often biased towards pink-turquoise—he avoided the emphasis on the naturalistic representation associated with the Impressionists' use of colour. It was also a pair which, again because of tonal equivalence, affirmed the flatness of the picture surface by negating the illusion of depth.
  • Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1982) p. 155.

• 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.
  • Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1982) p. 178.

• If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Book IV, Chapter III. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• 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!
  • Iconoclastic Conciliabulum, 754 AD [1]

• A picture is a poem without words.
  • Cornificius, Anet. ad Her., 4. 28. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.
  • Oliver Cromwell, Remark to the Painter, Lely. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Hard features every bungler can command:
  To draw true beauty shows a master's hand.
  • John Dryden, To Mr. Lee, on his Alexander, line 53. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Pictures must not be too picturesque.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Art. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• "Paint me as I am," said Cromwell,
  "Rough with age and gashed with wars;
  Show my visage as you find it,
  Less than truth my soul abhors."
  • James Thomas Fields, On a Portrait of Cromwell. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Sixtenth century represents the zenith of Ottoman miniature painting. During this time, the influences of the late 15th and early 16th centuries—the encounters with western European portraiture, the growing emphasis on historiographical painting, the impact of ;nautical cartography, and the enduring influence of the Persian legacy – began to crystallize into distinctly Ottoman styles and genres.
  • Gábor Ágoston, Bruce Alan Masters in: Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, Infobase Publishing, 1 January 2009, p. 268

• 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 delight.
  • Neil Gaiman, in his "Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Speech", in Mythprint (October 2004).

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder: 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.
  • Michael Francis Gibson and Lech Majewski, The Mill and the Cross, the film (2011) based upon Michael Francis Gibson's book The Mill and the Cross - Peter Bruegel's "Way to Calvary" (2000)

• A flattering painter, who made it his care
  To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (1774), line 63. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• 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.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Marble Faun, Book II, Chapter XII. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• It was to the painters of the previous generation that Monet turned... Boudin summed up clothed figures in rapidly noted dashes of color... that... merged the identities of color and line; Jongkind... made sky, rooftops, water, and foliage shimmer in separate dabs of bright paint; Corot employed broad bands of buttery pigment to give the sense of sunlight streaking through foliage to fall on meadow or forest road; Diaz and Rousseau put spots of paint side by side to create a surface mosaic of foliage; Courbet commonly used opaque paint, scraped and dabbed with a palette knife, to form a patchwork of textured areas that adhered as much to surface as to imagined depth. ...Courbet ...insisted that one must paint what one actually sees ...Monet's improvised technique, "sketchy" even in the most finished areas, was ...a further development of the free, somewhat rough way of applying paint which had characterized the mid-century vanguard. In Courbet... free handling was equated with opposition to authority... For other[s] of the same generation, sketchiness was considered forward-looking, independent, and "democratic"... opposed to the highly finished surfaces of officially sanctioned art. Daubigny was accused of giving mere "impressions" of nature... and Millet's shaggy surfaces were treated... as appropriate to his peasant subjects. ...Sincerity, truth, immediacy, spontaneity, natural light, and color, the banishing of muddy colors, the distrust of smooth finish—these were the moral underpinnings of artistic technique that Monet adopted.
  • Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (1988) p. 175-176.

• Well, something must be done for May,
  The time is drawing nigh—
  To figure in the Catalogue,
  And woo the public eye.

  Something I must invent and paint;
  But oh my wit is not
  Like one of those kind substantives
  That answer Who and What?

  • Thomas Hood, The Painter Puzzled. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.
  • He paints a dolphin in the woods, a boar in the waves.
  • Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), XXX. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• 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.
  • Mrs. Jameson, Memoirs and Essays, Washington Allston. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Nequeo monstrare et sentio tantum.
  • I only feel, but want the power to paint.
  • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), VII. 56. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.
  • Frida Kahlo quoted in Time Magazine, "Mexican Autobiography" (27 April 1953)

• The form of my painting is the content.
  • Ellsworth Kelly quoted in: "Abstract Art", Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 173.

• Le Bain... has proved as defiant in execution as it had been in conception... [H]e abandoned chiaroscuro, a technique perfected by Leonardo da Vinci and exploited by successful Salon painters... Manet... did away with most... half-tones—the transitions between highlights and shadows—such that his figures... looked harshly lit. ...Since an optical illusion makes light colors advance and dark ones recede, most artists painted a dark undercoat... la sauce.., a transluscent mixture of linseed oil, turpentine and often bitumen... Manet... after The Absinthe Drinker, working instead on canvases treated with off-white primers... gave Le Bain a greater luminosity... at the expense of... spatial recession [depth]. ...Painters were usually trained to create a subtle relief on the surface... Dark colors, such as... for shadows, were spread very thin while highlights were "loaded" or "impasted"... in thick layers... [T]ogether with the darker undercoat... whites would advance and the darks retreat. ...Manet boldly disregarded this practice in Le Bain... Though a few... as Gèricault and Courbet, had... experimented with this technique, the boldness of Manet's application witnessed... a new direction in art.
  • Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (2006) pp. 49-50; citing Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1993).

• Monet and Renoir... concentrated... on the waters of the Seine sparkling... dissolving solid forms into dazzling patches of color. Monet... excelled at... light shimmering on the waves. He worked on the same pale ground favored by Manet but... highlighted... with vibrant pigments, some... newly invented... added... in small commas and dashes. Advances in chemistry... meant nineteenth-century painters possessed a much wider range of pigments... [M]any painters... [had] learned to tone down their works by coating them with transparent brownish glazes made from... ingredients... as bitumen. ...Painters who challenged this prejudice against color... notably Delacroix... found themselves reviled by conservative critics. ...The coruscating reflections in [Monet's] La Grenouillère canvases owed much to his use of pigments such as chromium oxide green and cobalt violet. The former... produced from a... reaction involving chromium salts and boric acid, was manufactured... in 1862. Cobalt violet [was] invented in 1859 by... Jean Salvétat... Monet blended it with Prussian blue to create a shimmering water... He would eventually... regard this... pigment as an essential for capturing... light and shade: "I have finally discovered the color of the atmosphere... It is violet." ...Monet might never have discovered the true nature of the atmosphere without... chemists...
  • Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (2006) pp. 268-269; citing Simon Jennings, The Collins Artists' Colour Manual (2003) p. 55.

• Ottoman miniature painting gave up the warmth, the whimsy, the theatricality, and the multiple meanings of Iranian art in favor of realism, which was also expressed in Ottoman maps, fortress plans and geographies.
  • Ira M. Lapidus in: Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History, Cambridge University Press, 29 October 2012, p. 446

• The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, No. 136. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• The picture that approaches sculpture nearest
  Is the best picture.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Michael Angelo, Part II. 4. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• One question conditions the dynamics and balance of color in the composition of a painting: whence the source of light?
  • Osip Mandelstam THE NINETEENTH CENTURY translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)

• Vain is the hope by colouring to display
  The bright effulgence of the noontide ray
  Or paint the full-orb'd ruler of the skies
  With pencils dipt in dull terrestrial dyes.
  • Mason, Fresnoy's Art of Painting. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• 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.
  • William Hardy McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, Ch.4 (1976).

• 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.
  • Grandma Moses, as quoted in her obituary in The New York Times (14 December 1961)

• I mix them with my brains, sir.
  • John Opie, when asked with what he mixed his colors. See Samuel Smiles, Self Help, Chapter V. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, ears if he's a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he's a poet, or even, if he's a boxer, only some muscles? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, the passionate or pleasing events of the world, shaping himself completely in their image... No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.
  • Pablo Picasso, interview with Simone Téry (March 24, 1945) as quoted by Alfred H. Barr Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art (1946), also by Dr. Neil Cox, An Interview with Pablo Picasso (2014)

• Look for the kind of nature that suits your temperament. The motif should be observed more for shape and color than for drawing. There is no need to tighten the form which can be obtained without that. Precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole, it destroys all sensations. Do not define too closely the outlines of things; it is the brushstroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing. In a mass, the greatest difficulty is not to give the contour in detail, but to paint what is within. Paint the essential character of things, try to convey it by any means whatsoever, without bothering about technique.—When painting, make a choice of subject, see what is lying at the right and what at the left, and work on everything simultaneously. Don't work bit by bit but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere, with brushstrokes of the right color and value, while noticing what is alongside. Use small brushstrokes and try to put down your perceptions immediately. The eye should not be fixed on one point, but should take in everything, while observing the reflections which the colors produce on their surroundings. Work at the same time upon the sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Cover the canvas at the first go, then work at it until you can see nothing more to add. Observe the aerial perspective as well, from the foreground to the horizon, the reflection of the sky, of foilage. Don't be afraid of putting on color, refine the work little by little.—Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression you feel. Don't be timid in front of nature: one must be bold, at the risk of being deceived and making mistakes. One must have only one master—nature; she is the one always to be consulted.
  • Camille Pissarro, (the gist of Pissaro's advice given 1896-1897 to the the painter, Louis Le Bail from Le Bail's unpublished private notes) as quoted by John Rewald, History of Impressionism (1946) pp. 356-357.

• You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!
  • Suman Pokhrel, Between Rainbows and Melody

• I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end.. ..Thus the fact that good European moderns (European artists who lived in the U.S. because of the Nazi-regime, fh) are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Miró, are still abroad.
  • Jackson Pollock Art and Architecture Vol. 61 no. 2, February 1944; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, p. 138, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York, 1990.

• He best can paint them who shall feel them most.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa and Abelard, last line. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Lely on animated canvas stole
  The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
  • Alexander Pope, Second Book of Horace, Epistle I, line 149. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• The fellow mixes blood with his colors.
  • Guido Reni, comment about Peter Paul Rubens. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child. I want a red to be sonorous—to sound, like a bell; if it doesn't turn out that way, I put more reds or other colors till I get it. I am no cleverer than that. I have no rules and no methods; any one can look over my materials or watch how I paint—he will see that I have no secrets. I look at a nude; there are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.
  Nowadays they want to explain everything. But if they could explain a picture it wouldn't be art. Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? It must be indescribable and it must be inimitable. ...So in our Gothic architecture: each column is a work of art, because the old French monk who set it up and carved its capital did what he liked—not doing everything alike, as... when things are made by machinery or by rules, but each thing different—like the trees in the forest.
  The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.
  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1908) answering Walter Pach's question concerning Renoir's method, as quoted by Walter Pach, "Renoir", Scribner's Magazine (1912) Vol. 51, pp. 610-612,; see also John Rewald, History of Impressionism (1946) p. 428, giving the year 1908 and quoting from Pach's article "Renoir", as reprinted in Walter Pach, Queer Thing, Painting (1938).

• It was Pissarro's sympathetic attitude to all sincere efforts which prompted Theo van Gogh to ask him... whether he could help his brother. After his first attack, Vincent had remained for one year at the Saint-Rémy Asylum... where he had been able to work between repeated spells of madness... [He] had asked Theo to find him a place near Paris... At Theo's request Pissarro was ready to take Vincent into his house... but Madame Pissarro was afraid [for] her children. Pissarro thereupon recommended his old friend, Dr. Gachet at Auvers, who declared himself willing to take care of Vincent. The latter came to Auvers in May 1890; he killed himself there in July of the same year... After the suicide... Theo van Gogh fell seriously ill; he was taken to Holland and died in January 1891. He was replaced at the gallery... M. Boussod, the owner, complained that Theo... had "accumulated appalling things by modern painters which had brought the firm to discredit. Indeed, Theo had left a stock of works by Degas, Gauguin, Pissarro, Guillaumin, Redon, Lautrec, Monet and others. According to M. Boussod only Monet's canvases were saleable...
  • John Rewald, History of Impressionism (1946) p. 414.

• 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.
  • John Ruskin, True and Beautiful, Painting, Introduction. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• 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.
  • John Ruskin, The Two Paths, Lect. I. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Look here, upon this picture, and on this.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 4, line 53. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• What demi-god
  Hath come so near creation?
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 2, line 116. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• I will say of it,
  It tutors nature: artificial strife
  Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 36. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• The painting is almost the natural man:
  For since dishonour traffics with man's nature,
  He is but outside; pencill'd figures are
  Ev'n such as they give out.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 157. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Wrought he not well that painted it?
  He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he's but a filthy piece of work.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act 1, scene 1, line 200. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• With hue like that when some great painter dips
  His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, Canto V, Stanza 23. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• … ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει [sc. ὁ Σιμωνίδης], τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν.
  • Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting that speaks.
  • Simonides of Ceos quoted by Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium 3.346f.
    • Variant translations:

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Painting is silent poetry, poetry is eloquent painting.

See also: Ut pictura poesis

• There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Essays and Studies, Matthew Arnold's New Poems. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• But who can paint
  Like nature? Can Imagination boast,
  Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 465. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• Take a piece of glass of the size of a half sheet of royal folio paper, and fix it... between your eye and the object you wish to portray. Then move it away until your eye is two-thirds of a braccio away from the piece of glass, and fasten your head by means of an instrument in such a way as to prevent any movement of it whatsoever. Then close or cover up one eye, and with a brush or a piece of red chalk finely ground mark out on the glass what is visible beyond it; afterwards, copy it by tracing on paper from the glass, then prick it out upon paper of a better quality and paint it if you so desire, paying special attention to the aerial perspective.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci XXIX Precepts of the Painter, Tr. Edward MacCurdy (1938).

• If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are representing, and then make the same squares upon the paper where you wish to draw the said nude but very faintly. You should then put a pellet of wax on a part of the network to serve as a mark which as you look at your model should always cover the pit of the throat, or if he should have turned his back make it cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. ...The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the network in proportion as you wish your figure to be less than life size...
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci XXIX Precepts of the Painter, Tr. Edward MacCurdy (1938).

• When you wish to see whether the general effect of your picture corresponds with that of the object represented after nature, take a mirror and set it so that it reflects the actual thing, and then compare the reflection with your picture, and consider carefully whether the subject of the two images is in conformity with both, studying especially the mirror. The mirror ought to be taken as a guide... you see the picture made upon one plane showing things which appear in relief, and the mirror upon one plane does the same. The picture is on one single surface, and the mirror is the same. ...if you but know well how to compose your picture it will also seem a natural thing seen in a great mirror.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci XXIX Precepts of the Painter, Tr. Edward MacCurdy (1938).

• [I]n 1892, Cézanne executed one of his most important works, The Card Players... It was in this same year that I saw Cézanne's pictures for the first time. It was at Tanguy's... Père Tanguy, a color merchant on a small scale, was the benefactor of more than one unrecognized artist. He considered himself something of a "rebel" because he had not been shot down under the Commune by the party of law and order. In reality he was just a good old soul who extended credit to impecunious artists, and took a passionate interest in their work. But he had a marked predilection for those whom he called with respectful emphasis, "the gentlemen of the School": Guillaumin, Van Gogh, Pissarro, and Vignon, to mention only a few. To his way of thinking, being one of the "School" was equivalent to being "modern": which meant that one must banish "tobacco juice" from the palette forever, and paint "thick." But with good-hearted indulgence, he grudgingly bestowed his respect... upon the luckless painter who honestly sought to earn his daily bread with ivory black. And if the truth were known, Père Tanguy, in common with the very "philistines" whom he scorned, was convinced at the bottom of his heart that hard work and good behavior were not merely prerequisites, but indispensable elements of success. Accordingly, referring to the author [Cézanne] of a picture done with the forbidden "thin mediums," he said candidly, "He's not one of the 'School'; he'll have a hard time arriving. But he'll get there in the end; he never plays the races and he doesn't drink a drop!"
  • Ambroise Vollard, Paul Cézanne (1914) Paris, Éditions G. Crès; as translated by Harold L. Van Doren in Paul Cézanne: His Life and Art (1923, 1926) p. 70.

• 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.
  • Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, Vol. I, Chapter II. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• In western India, Jainism, an Indian religion which expounded renunciation and asceticism, gave rise to unique miniatures which flowered into the school of Rajasthani painting. The miniature paintings commenced with the patronage of the Jain merchants of Gujarat in the fourteenth century. The painting they commissioned were of illustrations of Jain Royalty and deities which were painted on dried palm leaves and bound in wooden covers...when paper was introduced in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, as somewhat large format became available...They were part of the illustrated texts which were preserved in temple libraries. The illustrated text inspired much of the later Hindu miniature paintings.
  • Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models, Abhinav Publications, 1 January 2003, P.119

• The themes of Mithuna and Maithuna continued in paintings created during the Mughal and British rules (15-19th CE), mainly in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. The erotic themes of the Hindu miniature paintings represented loves of divine couples.
  • Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: "Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models", P.119

• In such miniature paintings the theme of lyric poetry was depicted with strong confident lines, throbbing colours, and bold patterns, but controlled workmanship. The lively landscape created a standard for these outstanding illustrations.
  • Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: "Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models", P.120

• The ornamental borders framing the miniature paintings seem to be inspired by the decorative designs on the Mughal carpets.
  • Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: "Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models", P.147

• I would I were a painter, for the sake
  Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,
  A fitting guide, with reverential tread,
  Into that mountain mystery.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Mountain Pictures, No. 2. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, water colour, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century elites, mainly in England and France, and spread across the rest of Europe from the middle of the 18th-century, remaining highly popular until the development of daguerreo types and photography in the mid-19th century. They were especially valuable in introducing people to each other over distances; a nobleman proposing the marriage of his daughter might send a courier with her portrait to visit potential suitors. Soldiers and sailors might carry miniatures of their loved ones while traveling, or a wife might keep one of her husband while he was away. The first miniaturists used water colour to paint on stretched vellum. During the second half of the 17th century, vitreous enamel painted on copper became increasingly popular, especially in France. In the 18th century, miniatures were painted with water colour on ivory, which had now become relatively cheap. As small in size as 40 mm × 30 mm, portrait miniatures were often used as personal w:Mementosmementos or as jewellery or snuff box covers.
  • George C. Williamson in: "The Work of Alyn Williams, P.R.M.S. (President of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters)" Pamphlet – January 1, 1920

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