Painting
And those who paint 'em truest praise 'em most. ~ Joseph Addison
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay, copper or concrete, and may incorporate multiple other materials including sand, clay, paper, gold leaf as well as objects.
Painting is a mode of expression and the forms are numerous. Drawing, composition or abstraction and other aesthetics may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life or landscape painting), photographic, abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in nature. References to painting are also used metaphorically to denote imagery produced in the mind by words, music, or other means of expression.
Contents |
Quotes [edit]
Quotes are listed alphabetically by author
A-D [edit]
- Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast
And those who paint 'em truest praise 'em most.- Joseph Addison, The Campaign, last line. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- As certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio.
- Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, Emerson. Phrase found also in Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Chapter XII. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- From the mingled strength of shade and light
A new creation rises to my sight,
Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow,
So warm with light his blended colors glow.
* * * * * *
The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring
Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring.- Lord Byron, Monody on the death of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan, Stanza 3. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer.
- Thomas Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Book IV, Chapter III. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- A picture is a poem without words.
- Cornificius, Anet. ad Her., 4. 28. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.
- Oliver Cromwell, Remark to the Painter, Lely. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Hard features every bungler can command:
To draw true beauty shows a master's hand.- John Dryden, To Mr. Lee, on his Alexander, line 53. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
E-H [edit]
The time is drawing nigh—
To figure in the Catalogue,
And woo the public eye. ~ Thomas Hood
- Pictures must not be too picturesque.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Art. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- "Paint me as I am," said Cromwell,
"Rough with age and gashed with wars;
Show my visage as you find it,
Less than truth my soul abhors."- James Thomas Fields, On a Portrait of Cromwell. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.
- A flattering painter, who made it his care
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.- Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (1774), line 63. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- The fellow mixes blood with his colors.
- Guido Reni of Peter Paul Rubens. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Marble Faun, Book II, Chapter XII. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Well, something must be done for May,
The time is drawing nigh—
To figure in the Catalogue,
And woo the public eye.Something I must invent and paint;
But oh my wit is not
Like one of those kind substantives
That answer Who and What?- Thomas Hood, The Painter Puzzled. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.
- He paints a dolphin in the woods, a boar in the waves.
- Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), XXX. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
I-L [edit]
- He that seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius: as he must needs paint for other minds, and not for his own.
- Mrs. Jameson, Memoirs and Essays, Washington Allston. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Nequeo monstrare et sentio tantum.
- I only feel, but want the power to paint.
- Juvenal, Satires, VII. 56. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- The form of my painting is the content.
- Ellsworth Kelly quoted in: "Abstract Art", Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 173
- The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals.
- François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, No. 136. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- The picture that approaches sculpture nearest
Is the best picture.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Michael Angelo, Part II. 4. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
M-P [edit]
- Vain is the hope by colouring to display
The bright effulgence of the noontide ray
Or paint the full-orb'd ruler of the skies
With pencils dipt in dull terrestrial dyes.- Mason, Fresnoy's Art of Painting. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- I mix them with my brains, sir.
- John Opie, when asked with what he mixed his colors. See Samuel Smiles, Self Help, Chapter V. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end.. ..Thus the fact that good European moderns (European artists who lived in the U.S. because of the Nazi-regime, fh) are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Miró, are still abroad.
- Jackson Pollock Art and Architecture Vol. 61 no. 2, February 1944; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, p. 138, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York, 1990
- He best can paint them who shall feel them most.
- Alexander Pope, Eloisa and Abelard, last line. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Lely on animated canvas stole
The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.- Alexander Pope, Second Book of Horace, Epistle I, line 149. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
Q-T [edit]
- Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.
- John Ruskin, True and Beautiful, Painting, Introduction. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- If it is the love of that which your work represents — if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you — if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you — if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof.
- John Ruskin, The Two Paths, Lect. I. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Look here, upon this picture, and on this.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 4, line 53. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- What demi-god
Hath come so near creation?- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 2, line 116. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- I will say of it,
It tutors nature: artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life.- William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 36. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- The painting is almost the natural man:
For since dishonour traffics with man's nature,
He is but outside; pencill'd figures are
Ev'n such as they give out.- William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 157. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- Wrought he not well that painted it?
He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he's but a filthy piece of work.- William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act 1, scene 1, line 200. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, Canto V, Stanza 23. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Essays and Studies, Matthew Arnold's New Poems. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- But who can paint
Like nature? Can Imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?- James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 465. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
U-Z [edit]
- They dropped into the yolk of an egg the milk that flows from the leaf of a young fig-tree, with which, instead of water, gum or gumdragant, they mixed their last layer of colours.
- Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, Vol. I, Chapter II. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
- I would I were a painter, for the sake
Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,
A fitting guide, with reverential tread,
Into that mountain mystery.- John Greenleaf Whittier, Mountain Pictures, No. 2. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.