John Constable
The world is wide. No two days are alike, nor even two hours, neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other.Collection: Art
The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty.Collection: Beauty
Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.Collection: Science
Painting is but another word for feeling.
I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
The sky is the source of light in nature - and governs everything.
Landscape is my mistress - 'tis to her I look for fame.
The sound of water escaping from mill dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things.
When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.
Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all originality must spring.
All my indispositions have their source in my mind. It is when I am restless and unhappy that I become susceptible of cold, damp, heats, and such nonsense.
My art flatters nobody by imitation; it courts nobody by smoothness, tickles nobody by petiteness... there is no finish in nature.
I know dock leaves pretty well, but I should not attempt to introduce them into a picture without having them before me.
Whatever may be thought of my art, it is my own; and I would rather possess a freehold, though but a cottage, than live in a palace belonging to another.
I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.Collection: Beauty
It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.Collection: Names
The sky is the source of light in Nature and it governs everything.Collection: Light
Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it.Collection: Horse
Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?Collection: Nature
The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from one another.Collection: Summer
The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork.those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful.Collection: Grateful
Light - dews - breezes - bloom - and freshness; not one of which... has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.Collection: Light
Painting is with me but another word for feeling.Collection: Feelings
An artist who is self-taught is taught by a very ignorant person indeed.Collection: Education
Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher about humanity.Collection: Communication
I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting. I hope to show that ours is a regularly taught profession; that it is scientific as well as poetic; that imagination alone never did, and never can, produce works that are to stand by a comparison with realities.Collection: Reality
Turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy.Collection: Paint
I do not consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas.Collection: Feet
My picture [A Boat Passing a Lock, 1823-6] is liked at the [Royal] Academy, indeed it forms a decided feature and its light can not be put out. Because it is the light of nature - the Mother of all that is valuable in poetry - painting or anything else... my execution annoys most of them and all the scholastic ones - perhaps the scarifies I make for 'lightness' and 'brightness' is too much but these things are the essence of Landscape.Collection: Mother
My canvas soothes me into forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly - and worse - of the scene around me. Every gleam of sunshine is blighted to me in the art at least. Can it therefore be wondered at that I paint continual storms? "Tempest o'er tempest roll'd" - still the "darkness" is majestic.Collection: Art
Verse is a mechanism by which we can create interpretative illusions suggesting profoundities of response and understanding which far exceed the engagement or research of the writer.Collection: Art
Connoisseurs think the art is already done.Collection: Art
But You know Landscape is my mistress - 'tis to her that I look for fame - and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.Collection: Men
He [the artist] ought to have 'these powerful organs of expression' - colour and chiaroscuro - entirely at his command, that he may use them in every possible form, as well as that he may do with the most perfect freedom; therefore, whether he wishes to make the subject of a joyous, solemn, or meditative character, by flinging over it the cheerful aspect which the sun bestows, by a proper disposition of shade, or by the appearances that beautify its arising or its setting, a true "General Effect" should never be lost sight of.Collection: Powerful
My art flatters nobody by imitation, it courts nobody by smoothness, nobody by petitelieness without either fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee; how then can I hope to be popular?Collection: Art
The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.Collection: Art
The output is far from smooth, and the impact on dispatchable plant required to deal with residual demand is highly significant. Our view is that plant operating under these conditions in the support role for wind will suffer: 1) reduced availability, 2) significantly reduced efficiency, and thus 3) higher emissions per MWh generated.Collection: Availability
I ought to respect myself for my friends' sake, and my children's. It is time, at fifty-six, to begin, at least, to know oneself, - and I do know what I am not, and your regard for me has at least awakened me to believe in the possibility that I may yet make some impression with my "light" - my "dews" - my "breezes" - my bloom and freshness, - no one of which qualities has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.Collection: Children
No man who can do any one thing well will be able to any different thing equally well.Collection: Men
There has never been a boy painter, nor can there be. The art requires a long apprenticeship, being mechanical, as well as intellectual.Collection: Art
But the sound of water escaping from mill-dams, &c., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among "sheep cotes and mills." As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.Collection: Sheep
The world is rid of Lord Byron, but the deadly slime of his touch still remains.Collection: World
A sketch will not serve more than one state of mind & will not serve to drink at again & again — in a sketch there is nothing but the one state of mind — that which you were in at the time.Collection: Mind
I know very well what I am about and that my skies have not been neglected, though they often failed in execution - and often no doubt from over anxiety about them.Collection: Sky
It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage.Collection: Hands
I never saw an ugly thing in my life.Collection: Ugly Things
It is always my endeavour however in making a picture that it should be without a companion in the world. At least such should be a painters ambition.Collection: Ambition
I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass.Collection: Glasses
The climax of absurdity to which art may be carried when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher.Collection: Fashion