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

— J. M. W. Turner Donald B. MacCulloch (1927)

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Notes from Wikiquote

As quoted in: George Seferis (1999) A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951. p. 105

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quote: My job is to paint what I see, not what I know

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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].

To select, combine and concentrate that which is beautiful in nature and admirable in art is as much the business of the landscape painter in his line as in the other departments of art.

All J. M. W. Turner quotes →

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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.