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It is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confined; namely that which addresses itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the eye.

— J. M. W. Turner Eric Shanes (2012)

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More quotes by J. M. W. Turner

Painting can never show her nose in company with architecture without being snubbed.

If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.

He John Ruskin knows a great deal more about my pictures than I do; he puts things into my head, and points out meanings in them that I never intended.

I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one [one of Girtin's yellow drawings].

My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.

Donald B. MacCulloch (1927)

All J. M. W. Turner quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: J. M. W. Turner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.