28 quotes
No man who can do any one thing well will be able to any different thing equally well.
He seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent, and so airy.
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.
We see nothing truly till we understand it.
his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)
It is so ambiguous as to be scarcely intelligible in some parts (and those the principal), yet as a whole, it is novel and affecting.
A self-taught painter is one taught by a very ignorant person.
The Quarterly Review vol. 119 (1866)
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.
Painting is but another word for feeling.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Sept. 6th, 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.
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.
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.
Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments?
his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)
Only think that I am now writing in a room full of Claudes... almost of the summit of my earthly ambitions.
England, with her climate of more than vernal freshness, and in whose summer skies, and rich autumnal clouds, the observer of Nature may daily watch her endless varieties of effect.. ..to one brief moment caught [by the artist] from fleeting time..
I know very well what I am about, & that my skies have not been neglected, though they often failed in execution — and often, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them — which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature always has — in all her movements.
The climax of absurdity to which the art may be carried, when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher... His landscape, of which he was evidently fond, is pastoral; and such pastorality! the pastoral of the Opera house.
his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)