Portraits Quotes - Page 6

What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting.

The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.

The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion.

I never wanted to be commissioned to paint portraits. I like to choose my own subject and make a character study from it.

The painter who is so enamoured by the beauties of the parts of a landscape, that he strives to represent all, cannot succeed. His picture will be an arrangement of a series of portraits of things without unity... There must be variety and contrast, but in measured doses.

When I first came to America there still was Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine, and the photography in those magazines was amazing to look at. They had the best portraits, and their news photography.

Pre-planning is essential. Research, research, research. If you are going to do a portrait, know as much as you can about the person beforehand. The web makes this very easy.

I love my dog. Actually, the best portrait I did was of my dog.

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?

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.

To be Despair. It is a portrait. Only close your eyes and feel.

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.

I love going to galleries, particularly the National Portrait Gallery.

At the best and even unexpurgated, diaries give a distorted or one-sided portrait of the writer.

Of what use are pedigrees, or to be thought of noble blood, or the display of family portraits, O Ponticus?

Everything in a wide sense is a kind of a self-portrait. It's just the way you see things and you're curious about certain things and just excited about them.

The person portrayed and the portrait are two entirely different things.

I do not care to paint portraits indoors. I cannot feel sympathetic.

The danger, I find, is that you can become too formulaic, like some commissioned portrait painters who develop a methodology.

I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.

When I paint a portrait I want to know more than just the looks of the person. I want to know how they live and what their feelings are... It then becomes more than just physiognomy, but the feel of the person.

An act of naming should quite rightly enable me to call any-thing a self-portrait, not only any drawing, 'portrait' or not, but everything that happens to me, that I can affect, or that affects me.

Portrait painters' mission is to portray people and the beauty of Creation. They should stay clear of ego.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

Your library is your portrait.