A painter paints the appearance of things not their objective correctness. In fact he creates new appearances of things. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Paint like nobody is watching and paint like you don’t need any money. John Ferrie
How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 1670
‘Painters and poets alike have always had licence to dare anything.’ We know that, and we both claim and permit others this indulgence. Horace, Ars Poetica
Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up. Miguel de Cervantes
Painting is welcome.
The painting is almost the natural man;
For since dishonour traffics with man’s nature,
He is but outside; these pencilled figures are
Even such as they give out. William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens I i @161
An imitation in lines and colours on any surface of all that is to be found under the sun. Nicolas Poussin
As an aid to realise perspective is of no importance – the realistic painters of Flanders got on very well without it. But as a symbol it means something, and as a symbol it passes into the decorative arts of early renaissance. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 4/13: Man the Measure of All Things, BBC 1969
Realistic portraiture ... Jan van Eyck – no-one has looked at the human face with a dispassionate eye and recorded his findings with a more delicate eye. ibid.
The first evolved landscape in European painting – the background of Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb; the foreground is painted with a medieval sharpness of detail. ibid.
Light. The light of early morning. The light of Holland. It spreads over the flat fields, it’s reflected in the canals, and it picks out distant towers and spires. This was the inspiration of the first great school of landscape; one might almost say skyscape painting. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 8/13: The Light of Experience
The process of seeing paintings or anything else is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe. It isn’t so much the paintings themselves I want to consider as the way we now see them. John Berger, Ways of Seeing
I’m painting an idea not an ideal. Basically, I’m trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion. Euan Uglow
Watercolour is amongst the most popular of all visual media ... And yet it’s a medium that suffers from status anxiety, from a fear that it’s just a watered-down version of oil-painting. In an exhibition here at Tate Britain ... Watercolour’s history is in fact more richer and more varied and much more substantial than has previously been acknowledged. Tim Marlow on ... Watercolour 2011
What is painting and sculpture for? Tim Marlow, The Nude: The Enlightenment, Sky Arts 2012
Photography threw down a huge challenge to those who painted or sculpted the human body. ibid.
Monet is using his intense close scrutiny of Nature to rethink the whole notion of landscape painting ... Monet never experimented with colour for its own sake: it was always used to evoke the effects of natural light. Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 3/3, 2012
He used thickly applied paint; in some places it stands out from the canvas in great blobs giving an extra dimension to the flower heads. Great Artists with Tim Marlow: Van Gogh
In 1987 one of the Sunflower paintings sold at auction for nearly forty million dollars. The ultimate accolade in a market-driven world. But supremely ironic given that Van Gogh failed to sell more than a single picture in his lifetime. ibid.
Their edginess, their delicacy, and precariousness, surfaces which still seem fresh, radiating light and energy and feeling. ibid.
Van Gogh was at Saint-Remy for a year. But eventually he was let out of the confines of the asylum. And in a sense the escape or liberation is reflected in his paintings. Tim Marlow on the Real Van Gough
At this point in western art history in 1890 no-one had painted a work like this, and no-one seemed capable of doing so. ibid.
Adored by poets, plagiarised by artists, parodied by critics and even stolen by an Italian workman – the most famous painting in the world by the most celebrated artist in the world – Leonardo da Vinci. A man who completed barely twenty pictures but whose influence was immense. Great Artists with Tim Marlow: Leonardo
Argentina was ruled by a ruthless military junta when the biggest art theft in the nation’s history occurred. Impressionist paintings by some of France’s most famous artists were stolen. For more than twenty years the paintings ... vanished. The hunt for the paintings covered three countries, and was finally resolved in a courtroom in Paris. Art of the Heist: The Disappeared, 2007
Who would buy world-class works of art? ... Cahill put the word out in the underworld he was keen to sell the paintings. This gave the police the opportunity they needed: they set up a sting ... He got away with paintings worth over thirty million pounds. Underworld: Dublin Gangland, 2011
Gas lighting was an interesting challenge to paint of course. Waldemar Januszczak, The Art of the Night ***** BBC 2011
Bernini: as architect, as sculpture, as painter, the man could do everything. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s I, BBC 2013
A great ejaculation of emotional energy ... of paint. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Van Gogh, BBC 2006
At the heart of all the greatest pictures from this prolific summer is the opposition between barren and fruitful worlds. Between comradeship and loneliness: welcome to The Night Cafe. ibid.
Not mad exactly but suffering. Vincent was an epileptic and struggled with deepening bouts of depression, made worse no doubt by the relentless bad news from Theo that still nobody wanted to buy his pictures. ibid.
They are anything but deranged: they are unflinching, tumultuous, heroic, and completely new. And here’s the most startling of them all: Wheat Field with Crows. ibid.
There is another painting in the 1840 show about which the critics are also absolutely unanimous: in dismay and scorn. J M W Turner’s Slave Ship ... The greatest British painting of the nineteenth century. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Turner
It’s not just what he paints that gets him into trouble with high-class critics, it’s the way that he paints it. ibid.
All his life Rembrandt seemed to love the filmy muck of his paint. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rembrandt
As if he was being buried within one of his own paintings. Vincent – The Untold Story of Our Uncle II, caption, Sky Arts 2011
The Mona Lisa is probably the great summary of what he [da Vinci] could do. Professor Martin Kemp, Oxford University
We are not sure how the Mona Lisa ended up in the Louvre. As usual there are different theories. Professor Donald Sassoon, author Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa: We can read what we like in it. Professor Donald Sassoon
There are perhaps no more than fifteen paintings by Leonardo in the world. Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure, BBC 2011
In New York locked away at a secret address is a newly discovered painting by Leonardo. ibid.
A good painter has to bring up two things: the physical appearance of the subject he is painting but also what is in the mind: the intentions of the soul. Leonardo da Vinci
Painting excels because it does not fade as music does as soon as it is born; it endures. Leonardo da Vinci
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard. Leonardo da Vinci
Considered by many scholars to be the greatest painter of all time, producing both the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Brad Meltzer’s Decoded s2e8: Da Vinci, History 2011
This painting [Mona Lisa] is not only one of the towering achievements of the skill and vision of Art but its creation embodies the central purpose of our civilisation. John F Kennedy