Many cherish the idea that a photograph is an exact presentment of nature, and accept without question the paradox that a photograph cannot lie. Actually there never was a more unmitigated liar.
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.
Not only does a lens distort forms, but the ordinary plate makes an unholy mess of colour in its tone relations. Yellow becomes black, and blue white. Black sunflowers against a white sky – what a travesty!
It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.
Luminosity is a quality dependent as much on technique as on the physical properties of individual pigments.
The importance of colour is as nothing compared with that of form, chiaroscuro and arrangement. They are the true and enduring bases of pictorial art.
Since art exists for humanity it is not unreasonable to assume that humanity has some rights in the matter. Who pays the piper calls the tune. An artist cannot be at once a rebel and a comfortable citizen.
The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius.
While sincerity and over-anxiety can spoil a picture, through superfluous elaboration and unnecessary correction, the carelessness that would leave it in an unfinished state is even more reprehensible.
The beauties of conception are always superior to those of expression.
Artists are perennially implored to consider ‘the limitations of the medium.’ Whoever invented this expression exaggerated the limitations of the English language. We are not concerned with what effects cannot be produced with our materials.
I don’t like to think that I am a slave to technique, or so inept that I have to restrict myself to one method.
The most admirable method is that by which each wash of colour, large or small, is never disturbed. It admits of practically no overpainting, sponging or scrubbing. The colour stays where it is put.
Aerial perspective has nothing to do with line, but concerns tones and colours, by the delicate manipulation of which an artist can suggest infinite distance.
Be content with nothing less than perfection.
It is evident that no derivative laws can teach the young student to see and apprehend colour in nature. His perception needs development as urgently as his muscles.
Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence.
The beauty and wonders of nature are as alluring as the pursuit of Art, and made of me a landscape painter.
A horizontal or vertical line lacks energy, compared with one that deviates from either. The difference between these graphic expressions is the difference between movement and repose.
A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it.