Portraits Quotes - Page 13

• So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and, in the case of portraits, no characterisation.

  William Dobell

  Long, People, Individuality

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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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• 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, Portraiture, Study

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• Satan was a blunderer ... who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him, and his portrait would have been more flattering.

  George Eliot

  Satan, Made, Should

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.1550, Delphi Classics

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• Ancient portraits are symbolic images without any immediate relation to the individuals represented; they are not portraits as we understand them. It is remarkable that philologists who are capable of carrying accuracy to the extremes in the case of words are as credulous as babies when it comes to "images," and yet an image is so full of information that ten thousands words would not add up to it.

  George Sarton

  Baby, Add, Information

  "A History of Science". Book by George Sarton. Volume 2: "Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C.", Preface, 1959.

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• When I make a portrait,I cannot limit it tothe lines of the head, for that head belongs toa body, it exists ina setting which influences it, it is part of a totality that I cannot suppress. The impression you produce upon me is not thesame if I catchsight of youalone ina gardenor if Isee you in the midst of a group of other people, in a living room or on the street.

  Medardo Rosso

  People, Body, Lines

  Quoted in Edmond Claris De l'impressionisme en sculpture, 'Medardo Rosso' (1902).

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• I'm interested in human vulnerability. We are alone, and my portraits reflect this quality. I don't want anything to get in the way of this feeling.

  Thomas S. Buechner

  Feelings, Quality, Way

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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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• Every single person is unlike anyone else. Therefore, in creating a portrait of someone... we must look carefully to catch that particular unique quality. In fact, we can neglect nothing because everything we select or do sends a message to the observer.

  Alton Tobey

  Unique, Creating, Quality

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• We... joked a little about presidential portraits. He [Bill Clinton] told me that he and Harrison Ford had been joking recently about how chins drop with age, and he didn't want to look that way.

  Nelson Shanks

  Presidential, Age, Looks

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• I was painting her portrait in the little studio, and when I came to the eyes I stopped, overcome by emotion, and said to her, 'Have you understood me?' She nodded affirmatively. 'Will you be my wife?' I asked. She made the same affirmative sign.

  Jules Breton

  Eye, Wife, Overcoming

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• Sometimes, in a portrait, I go straight in with paint onto canvas... Other than riding my bike up and down the hills around here, it is the most dangerous thing I do... like tightrope-walking without a safety net!

  David Cobley

  Safety, Riding, Canvas

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• Self-deceit is a most damaging trait. The remedy, for an artist, is to paint a self-portrait!

  Scott Kahn

  Artist, Self, Deception

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• As a boy, I used to look at reproductions of Rembrandt's portraits... the people in his paintings were so real I felt I knew them... It is his empathy for the sitter, combined with his enjoyment and dexerity in handling paint that captured my imagination then, and is what I am striving for still.

  David Cobley

  Real, Boys, Imagination

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• Portraits are to daily faces As an evening west To a fine, pedantic sunshine In a satin vest.

  Emily Dickinson

  Sunshine, West, Faces

  Emily Dickinson, Ralph William Franklin (1999). “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.84, Harvard University Press

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• I have no little insight into the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits obliged to face each other for ever--prints put together in portfolios.

  Robert Browning

  Book, People, Feelings

  Robert Browning (2015). “Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett”, p.267, e-artnow sro

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• I also remember when I watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer [1990] at, like, age 15. That scared the crap out of me. Because it didn't operate inside the usual conventions of the horror genre in the way that I could accept. I can accept horny teenager counselors being murdered at camp. But I couldn't accept the derangement of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which was that anyone could be murdered at any moment - whole families, with no build-up music and no meaning. It terrified me.

  Christopher Bollen

  Teenager, Horror Genre, Horny

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.

  Thomas Browne

  Philosophy, Real, School

  Sir Thomas Browne (1831). “Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Browne: With Some Account of the Author and His Writings”, p.25

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• I am living a new and exalted life of late. It steeps me in a sacred rapture to see a portrait develop and take soul under my hand. First, I throw off a study - just a mere study, a few apparently random lines - and to look at it you would hardly ever suspect who it was going to be; even I cannot tell, myself.

  Mark Twain

  Hands, Soul, Looks

  Mark Twain (1933). “Mark Twain's works”

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• I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another.

  Mark Twain

  Believe, Canvas, Trouble

  Mark Twain (1935). “The complete short stories and humorous sketches of Mark Twain”

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• Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.

  Edgar Degas

  Expression, People, Giving

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Writing, Self, Trying

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2764, Delphi Classics

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• In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me.

  Auguste Rodin

  Sight, Comfort, Form

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• Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven't I the right to paint you as I want?

  Oriana Fallaci

  Portraiture, Want, Paint

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• Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Photography, Painting, Starting

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