A landscape painting is essentially emotional in origin. It exists as a record of an effect in nature whose splendour has moved a human heart, and according as it is well or ill done it moves the hearts of others.
Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence.
A landscape painting in which composition is ignored is like a line taken from a poem at random: it lacks context, and may or may not make sense.
Style is instinctive and few achieve it in a notable degree. Its development is not hastened by instruction. It comes or it doesn't. It will take care of itself.
Let it not be assumed that the artist is so smug as to dislike true criticism. No sincere artist was ever completely satisfied with his labour.
Beauty may be perceived in any scene by one with sympathy and understanding. Beauty is in the mind.
Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence.
The beauty and wonders of nature are as alluring as the pursuit of Art, and made of me a landscape painter.
It is remarkable how very individual technique becomes in watercolour. Every man of personality finally arrives at a method peculiarly his own, as unique as his own fingerprint.
Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.
When spring is here the sketcher begins to look over his equipment and relishes in anticipation the soothing hours he will spend in the open, warmed by the sun, fanned by the breeze, charmed by the manifold delights of nature.
Colour is as variable and evanescent in the form of pigment as in visible nature.
It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.
Beauty, pleasure, and the good things of life are intensified, and perhaps only exist, by reason of contrast.
However exquisite the contours or the colours of clouds, trees, rivers or hills, may be in themselves, they must be sacrificed if they do not conform with the general plan.
Any subject is suitable provided it is of sufficient interest, but the design must be very carefully considered, and plenty of time and thought given to its construction.
Subject has the variety of life.
While it is emotion that gives an impulse to the landscape painter, it is his style that inspires the critic's praise, and his subject that inveigles the untutored beholder.
The most interesting studio work, and perhaps the most practicable, is painting from pencil sketches and notes... It ensures the elimination of all facts but those essential to the effect.
Many of the old masters of watercolour painted from notes, with enthusiasm either unabated or renewed. It is hard to assume the same degree of concentration in the studio, but not impossible.
Many rules for the creation of colour schemes have been published in recent years, but, while they are popular in commercial studies, I know of no creative artist who employs them. They are, per se, restrictive; their use precludes any chance of adventuring in this interesting field.
It is often said that the modern exhibition has ruined painting. It is an unfortunate fact that it does encourage competition, so that, to attract attention to his work, an artist is tempted to descend to sensationalism, whether it is expressed by strong colour, grotesque handling, unusual subject, or sheer size.
The painter who is so enamoured by the beauties of the parts of a landscape, that he strives to represent all, cannot succeed. His picture will be an arrangement of a series of portraits of things without unity... There must be variety and contrast, but in measured doses.
The beauties of conception are always superior to those of expression.
Annoyance arises from the feared implication that we are copyists in subject or treatment, or both, whereas the common qualities that establish the relationship result merely from a similarity of method.
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