Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Painting
And those who paint ’em truest praise ’em most.
Addison—The Campaign. Last line.
As certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio.
Augustine Birrell—Obiter Dicta. Emerson. Phrase found also in Sterne—Tristram Shandy. Ch. XII.
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.
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The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring
Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring.
Byron—Monody on the death of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan. St. 3.
If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer.
Carlyle—Frederick the Great. Bk. IV. Ch. III.
A picture is a poem without words.
Cornificus—Anet. ad Her. 4. 28.
Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.
Cromwell—Remark to the Painter, Lely.
Hard features every bungler can command:
To draw true beauty shows a master’s hand.
Dryden—To Mr. Lee, on his Alexander. L. 53.
Pictures must not be too picturesque.
Emerson—Essays. Of Art.
“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 T. Fields—On a Portrait of Cromwell.
A flattering painter, who made it his care
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
Goldsmith—Retaliation. L. 63.
The fellow mixes blood with his colors.
Said by Guido Reni of Rubens.
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.
Hawthorne—Marble Faun. Bk. II. Ch. XII.
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?
Hood—The Painter Puzzled.
Delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.
He paints a dolphin in the woods, a boar in the waves.
Horace—Ars Poetica. XXX.
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.
Nequeo monstrare et sentio tantum.
I only feel, but want the power to paint.
Juvenal—Satires. VII. 56.
The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals.
La Rochefoucauld—Maxims. No. 136.
The picture that approaches sculpture nearest
Is the best picture.
Longfellow—Michael Angelo. Pt. II. 4.
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.
I mix them with my brains, sir.
John Opie. Answer when asked with what he mixed his colors. See Samuel Smiles—Self Help. Chap. V.
He best can paint them who shall feel them most.
Pope—Eloisa and Abelard. Last line.
Lely on animated canvas stole
The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
Pope—Second Book of Horace. Ep. I. L. 149.
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.
Ruskin—True and Beautiful. Painting. Introduction.
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.
Ruskin—The Two Paths. Lect. I.
Look here, upon this picture, and on this.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 53.
What demi-god
Hath come so near creation?
Merchant of Venice. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 116.
I will say of it,
It tutors nature: artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
Timon of Athens. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 36.
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.
Timon of Athens. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 157.
Wrought he not well that painted it?
He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he’s but a filthy piece of work.
Timon of Athens. Act 1. Sc. 1. L. 200.
With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
Shelley—The Revolt of Islam. Canto V. St. 23.
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
Swinburne—Essays and Studies. Matthew Arnold’s New Poems.
But who can paint
Like nature? Can Imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
Thomson—Seasons. Spring. L. 465.
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.
Walpole—Anecdotes of Painting. Vol. I. Ch. II.
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.
Whittier—Mountain Pictures. No. 2.