Portraiture Quotes - Page 2

• There is no self-portrait of me.

  Gustav Klimt

  Self, Portraits, Self Portrait

  Gustav Klimt, Ankriktip, Abelia Serotina (2016). “Gustav Klimt Artworks”, p.46, Book and Magazine

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• A competent portraitist knows how to imply the profile in the full face.

  Aldous Huxley

  Faces, Profile, Know How

  Aldous Huxley (2001). “Complete Essays: 1936-1938”, Ivan R Dee

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• Painting someone's portrait is, of course, an impossible task. What an absurd idea to try and distil a human being, the most complex organism on the planet, into flicks, washes, and blobs of paint on a two-dimensional surface.

  David Cobley

  Ideas, Two, Trying

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• The portrait painter... If he insults his sitters his occupation is gone. Whether he paints the should instead of the features, or the latter with all its natural blemishes, he is as presumptuous as if he shouted, 'What a face. Hide it.' which would never do, although it is analogous to what landscape painters are doing every day.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Portraits, Gone, Occupation

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• You know, if one paints someone's portrait, one should not know him if possible.

  Otto Dix

  Portraits, Paint, Should

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• I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.

  Jamie Wyeth

  Portraits, Faces, Painting

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• I do not care to paint portraits indoors. I cannot feel sympathetic.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Portraits, Care, Paint

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• my sitters get tired waiting for commissioned portraits. If they commission me they have to wait years sometimes because I discard so many.

  William Dobell

  Tired, Years, Waiting

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• Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Lying, Self, Telling The Truth

  "Ingmar's self portrait" by Ingmar Bergman, 1957.

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• Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Pain, Book

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.7, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Artists with the lack of proper education and experience of working from life will copy whatever is visible on the photograph, without knowing what's underneath. As a result, instead of creating the in-depth and full of character portrait, they draw a mask with no soul.

  Igor Babailov

  Character, Artist, Creating

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• Don't listen to the fools who say that pictures of people can be of no consequence, or that painting is dead. There is much to be done.

  R. B. Kitaj

  People, Done, Fool

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• There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.

  Charles Dickens

  Art, Pain, Two

  Nicholas Nickleby ch. 10 (1839)

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• One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Portraits, Self Portrait, Satisfied

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• It is for the artist... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.

  James Whistler

  Artist, Men, One Day

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.107, Courier Corporation

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• An act of naming should quite rightly enable me to call any-thing a self-portrait, not only any drawing, 'portrait' or not, but everything that happens to me, that I can affect, or that affects me.

  Jacques Derrida

  Self, Drawing, Portraits

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• It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in His own essential portraiture and image in sanctifying us.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Jesus, Essentials, Justify

  Samuel Rutherford (1824). “Joshua redivivus: or, three hundred and fifty two religious letters ... To which is added, the Author's testimony to the covenanted work of reformation, between 1638 and 1649 ... As also, a large preface and postscript ... by the Rev. Mr. McWard. The tenth edition”, p.253

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• The artist does not see both eyes alike. There is always 'the eye' and the other eye... It adds life and plasticity to the drawing if the eye in the light is darker than the one in the shadow. It gives the head vividness.

  John French Sloan

  Eye, Artist, Light

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• The self-portrait is an act of objectifying the self and in that regard is a unique form of portraiture.

  Burton Silverman

  Unique, Self, Portraits

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• I never wanted to be commissioned to paint portraits. I like to choose my own subject and make a character study from it.

  William Dobell

  Character, Portraits, Study

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• Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin.

  E. M. Forster

  Roger, Able, Lips

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• I remember that at one time I always made a drawing before going to bed!! - Of myself I mean - though I finally destroyed most of them.

  James Whistler

  Mean, Drawing, Bed

  Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler (1976). “Whistler: The Graphic Work: Amsterdam, Liverpool, London, Venice: An Exhibition Organised by Thos. Agnew & Sons, London, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, in Association with the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1976”

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• The real artist is striving to depict his subject's character and to stress the caricature, but at least it is art which is alive.

  William Dobell

  Art, Real, Stress

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• I don't have lots of things in the background. I do like large faces, I find them strong and contemporary.

  Paul Emsley

  Strong, Faces, Backgrounds

  "Kate portrait: First painting gets mixed reviews". BBC Interview, www.bbc.com. January 11, 2013.

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• I always work directly from life, partly because I really enjoy having an interaction with the person in front of me but also because I love having a direct response to shape and color.

  Mary Beth McKenzie

  Color, Shapes, Enjoy

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