Painting

“ Though it be allowed that elaborate harmony of colouring, a brilliancy of tints, a soft and gradual transition from one to another, present to the eye, what an harmonious concert of music does to the ear, it must be remembered, that painting is not merely a gratification of the sight. ”

“ The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing “landscape with figures” amidst which we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. ”

“ In the painting of a MS., of the panels of a coffer, of a ceiling, a wall or an altar-piece the painter was alike—however different his theme and conception—possessed with a paramount impulse to decorate, to make the space or surface he dealt with as lovely to the eye in design and colour as he had skill to do.
The art of painting has, however, become considerably differentiated since those days. We are here in the nineteenth century encumbered with many distinctions in the art. ”

“ Only one painting served as a link to connect the past and present—a crafty, mysterious head with haggard and gaunt features, cheekbones punctuated with a comma of paint, the hair overspread with pearls, a painted neck rising stiffly from the fluted ruff. ”

“ And one of the chief delights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as distinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely correspondent to the close application of crowded notes without the least slur, in fine harp or piano playing. ”

“ As the light, with its ceaseless variety of tints and hues, is the most spiritual element of nature, and as the eye is the most spiritual of man’s senses, so painting, as concerned about these, is the most spiritual of the arts, and the one with which the symbolical spirit readily associates itself. Painting directs itself wholly to the eye, whereas sculpture appeals indeed to the eye, but only as the necessary medium for satisfying the corporeal sense and feeling. ”

“ But if any one desire the meretricious painting of warm light and cool yet not hard shade, the effect of colour, with the twitching of triangles, the spangles glittering, and all the arrangement contrived to take the eye, then he can have it here as well as noble sculpture. ”

“ In painting, what wonderful lights, what tender shadows, what exquisite chiaro-oscuro reveal them; and in sculpture, what breaking up into soft swellings and almost imperceptible lines is necessary before the hard material can be changed into living flesh. ”

“ This magical result of appearance can, however, be carried to such a pitch, that in contrast to it the exhibition of content becomes a matter of indifference, and painting tends to pass over, in the mere charm and perfume of its colour tones, and the contrast, fusion, and play of their harmonies, into the art of music, precisely as sculpture, in the elaboration of its reliefs, tends to associate itself with painting. ”

“ In this sensibility to colour we find a second and distinct origin of the art of painting.
What a perspective does a glance back at the development of painting afford! Painting, an art that on a flat surface can suggest to illusion the presence of solid forms with length, breadth and thickness; that on the area of a few square inches can convey the impression of the vast spaces of the universe, and carry the eye from receding plane to plane till the persons or objects that people them grow too minute for the eye to discern ”

“ Do we conclude that a piece of painting is made by chance when we see in it either shades, or even some careless touches? The painter, we say, might have better finished those carnations, those draperies, those prospects. ”

“ Painting, ruefully comparing sunshine and flake-white, gives up truth of colour, as it had already given up relief and movement; and instead of vying with nature, arranges a scheme of harmonious tints. ”

“ Could painting extend itself into time and present singly and in sequence the visions of objective nature, dramatically synthesised with colour and line, it could perhaps influence people to emotion in the way music does. ”

“ I thought it necessary in a former discourse, speaking of the difference of the sublime and ornamental style of painting—in order to excite your attention to the more manly, noble, and dignified manner—to leave perhaps an impression too contemptuous of those ornamental parts of our Art, for which many have valued themselves, and many works are much valued and esteemed. ”

“ They were seeking effects of line, light, color—mere sensuous and pictorial effects, in which religion and classicism played secondary parts. They believed in art for art's sake; that painting was a creation, not an illustration ”

“ Let them compare the patient finish, the complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality, exhausted from the absence of inward repose. ”

“ Just as the Church had educated people to understand painting as a language, so the love of all the pleasant things that painting suggested led in time to the love of this art as its own end, serving no obvious purpose either of decoration or suggestion, but giving pleasure by the skilful management of light and shadow, and by the intrinsic beauty of the colours. ”

“ Painting, as the most ornate of the three, owing to its greater power of expression and beauty of colour, must nevertheless be employed to decorate, in the true sense of the word, the plain spaces in a building, and in the largest and simplest manner, without any definite attempts to represent the true facts of nature, or at least it should be suggestive of such facts rather than descriptive of them. ”

“ I have taken up the art simply as I found it exemplified in the practice of the most approved painters. That approbation which the world has uniformly given, I have endeavoured to justify by such proofs as questions of this kind will admit; by the analogy which painting holds with the sister arts, and consequently by the common congeniality which they all bear to our nature. ”

“ Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the other fine arts by the imitation of concrete existences in nature. They copy the bodies of men and animals, the aspects of the world around us, and the handiwork of men. ”

“ The subject matter or content of painting is determined by its language, color, and line. These, as we have seen, by an imitation more or less exact, represent nature, the world of concrete things as directly presented to us in vision, colored and shapely. ”

“ But the artists who are of the broader view readily admit the importance in painting of these extra-artistic features. From the point of view of craft, of technical skill in painting, these matters of line, and color, and light and shade, and arrangement, and method of applying paint, all are of great importance. But only with the craftsman who is unduly interested in the question of skill do these purely artistic matters seem of greater importance than the factors of enjoyment already mentioned. ”

“ The development of painting in the last century is a striking illustration of such continuity. The painters sought to develop a definite tradition, thinking of themselves as carrying further the work of their predecessors. Of course these developments were largely technical in character, but beauty itself is the fruition of technique. ”

“ To this power the painter of genius directs his aim; in this sense he studies Nature, and often arrives at the end, even by being unnatural, in the confined sense of the word. The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of poetry from that of history. ”

“ In producing a painting of an object, the early artists mixed colored paints and spread them according to taste on stretched canvas or on the walls or windows of buildings. You know that our artists simply throw light and darkness into space in the necessary variations, and the effect is all that could be desired in the way of imitating nature. ”

“ With the history of art and the world's gallery of painting spread out before us, we may take a continuous view of the whole field. Leaving out the painters of the experimental era let us begin with the great masters of effect. ”

“ DURING the Middle Ages and up to recent times the chief task of painting has been, ostensibly, the telling and re-telling of the same Scripture stories; and, incidentally, the telling them with the addition of constantly new items of information about things: their volume, position, structure, locomotion, light and shade and interactions of texture and atmosphere ”

“ PAINTING, in art, the action of laying colour on a surface, or the representing of objects by the laying of colour on a surface. It is with painting in the last sense, considered as one of the fine arts, that this article deals. In the first sense, in so far as painting is a part of the builder’s and decorator’s trade it is treated above under the heading Painter-Work. ”

“ Knowledge of the harmony of analogy, a simple, effective, and ready way of varying painting, together with a knowledge of contrasts, the finer, higher, and superior system of effecting the most adorable and fetching color adornment, is an indispensable help to the painter, to attain which he can well afford to make many sacrifices. ”

“ First, the painting is something deliberately constructed and composed, the artist himself controlling and composing the colors and shapes, and hence their values also; while the natural beauty is an immediate reaction to given stimuli, each observer giving meaning to his sensations without intention or effort. ”

“ What I desire to enforce is the great truth that within the art of painting there exists, flourishes and advances a noble and glorious science which is essential and progressive.”
“Any one who can learn to write can learn to draw;” and every one who can learn to draw should learn to compose pictures. ”

“ That represents a certain style of drawing or painting, a conventional kind of art. But, if we are honestly trying to draw light and shade, if we are drawing varied tones, painting not merely flat washes of colour, then we cannot ignore the truth. ”

“ Ask a portrait painter to describe his agonies in accommodating the faces with which nature and his sitters have crowded his painting-room to the principles of his art: with the exception of perhaps ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which he can venture to give without shading much and adding more. ”

“ There are three things which constitute the art of painting, which make it interesting to the public, which give it permanence and rank among the efforts of human genius. They are, first, gusto or expression: i.e. the conveying to the eye the impressions of the soul, or the other senses connected with the sense of sight, such as the different passions visible in the countenance, the romantic interest connected with scenes of nature, the character and feelings associated with different objects. ”

“ In the appreciation of painting, which on various grounds appeals as an art to a far wider public than either architecture or sculpture, the same shortcomings are evident, though in a less degree, and with less mischievous results; for the witchery of colour, at least, is felt and appreciated, more or less consciously, by a very large number of people. ”

“ only remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; ”

“ It is hence that their painting possesses excellencies and defects of so peculiar a description; that they have carried the minuteness of finishing to so unparalleled a degree of perfection; that the brilliancy of their lights has thrown a splendour over the vulgarity of their subjects ”

“ For poets' and painters' minds are the same, and I infer that painting is superior to poetry from this:—that the painter possesses with the poet a vigorous imagination, where the poet stops, while the painter exceeds him in the mechanical and very difficult part of the art, that of handling the pencil. ”

“ Make a water-color painting of a simple piece of still life, choosing a color not too brilliant. Make the entire drawing with the brush, trying not to "work" your colors until the life and freshness are lost. ”

“ When I was a student in Paris away back in the seventies, a group of young artists who were at that time making some stir in the art world asserted with a great deal of unnecessary noise and bluster that good painting could glorify the most revolting subject. ”

“ When painting, if you feel that your colours are not what they should be, that your tones are dark, or too uneven, that your highest light is not 'in tune' with your middle light—take a piece of smoked glass and look through this at the reflection of your painting. ”

“ Painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the patron. Nature and actual life were about the only sources left from which original art could draw its materials. ”

“ Without attempting, therefore, to enumerate the great works which were there to be met with, we shall confine ourselves to a simpler object, to the delineation of the general character by which the different schools of painting are distinguished, and the great features in which they all differ from the sculpture of ancient times. ”

“ His art knew little preference, and for that reason it often lacked the higher sense of composition that painters, differently though perhaps not so greatly gifted, can command for their work. And so it was that the spiritual appeal of his painting varied extraordinarily according to the degree in which the theme had inspired him, and even more according to the measure of support which he received from the chosen model before his eyes. ”