An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
We look at a painting to know the painter; it’s his company we are after, not his skill.
If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.
I always ask at once, ‘Do you drink?’ and if she says ‘No,’ I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.
It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.
If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.
You shouldn’t say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe.
For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand – fearing naught and dreading no exposure.
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.
As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.
I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.
Can’t a person be born where they want to be born?
Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass.
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only – having no desire to teach.
People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.