Quotes & Sayings About Portrait Painting

You see, the catch about portrait painting
I've looked into the thing a bit - is that you can't start
painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and
they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first.
This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie. — P.G. Wodehouse

I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster's face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn't quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself?
"Both," Bea muttered, as if I'd spoken my question out loud. "Of course, it's both. But it shouldn't be. Goodness, no. — Jennifer Brown

Each little update - each individual bit of social information - is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. — Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Portrait: The Boy with All the Keys in the World with All the Locks — Jandy Nelson

As he went about to the other workrooms he realised that every painting was a self-portrait even when it was a still life or a scene over the roofs of Paris; for no man ever pictured anything but himself, his core, the things that he was basically. With every brush stroke the artist was mercilessly exposed: he could not conceal nothing, he could pretend to be another person, to believe in other values, but in the end he would fool no one. — Irving Stone

NEXT LIFE. My embroidery studio on the main street of Bayeux will be just one part of my Institute of Slow Information. I will also teach letter writing, listening, miniature portrait painting, and the art of doing one thing at a time. — Vivian Swift

I believe that street photography is central to the issue of photography - that it is purely photographic, whereas the other genres, such as landscape and portrait photography, are a little more applied, more mixed in the with the history of painting and other art forms. — Joel Meyerowitz

I followed the older woman out to the foyer. Taking the stairs, I scanned each painting that lined the walls. I stilled as I found a portrait that could only have been Nathaniel. He looked young and brash, no more than fifteen. His suit was painted in a regal colour, it set off his tanned skin and sky blue eyes.
"Handsome devil was he not?" Bess chuckled. "Or should I say, 'is he not'?"
I fought the urge to blush as I trailed after the housekeeper. — Freedom Matthews

I remembered that Johnson had declared portrait painting to be an improper employment for a woman. "Public practice of any art and staring in men's faces is very indelicate in a female," he had said.
Well I'd seen Dr. Johnson's face in the book's frontispiece and I couldn't imagine anyone male or female wanting to stare into it for any length of time - the man was an absolute toad. — Alan Bradley

When painting portraits a lot of people say, 'Why not get a photograph of the person?' Photography is wonderful and it is an art form in itself, but ... my portrait is a culmination of elements ... a truer image of a person than just the 'click' of a snapshot. — Jamie Wyeth

An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows. — W. H. Auden

In 1856, shortly before his death, Lord Ellesmere gave the painting to the new National Portrait Gallery in London as its founding work. As the gallery's first acquisition, it has a certain sentimental prestige, but almost at once its authenticity was doubted. — Bill Bryson

There are certain things - How to say this? OK. Let me give you an example. Can I give you an example? There's a self-portrait by Rembrandt. It's at Kenwood House, very close to where we live. It's one of my favorite paintings. I go to see it quite a lot. I start off on a walk on the Heath, and then I find myself there. It's one of the last self-portraits he did. He painted it sometime between 1665 and when he died four years later, bankrupt and alone. Whole stretches of the canvas are bare. There's a hurried intensity in the strokes - you can see where he scratched into the wet paint with the end of the brush. It's as if he knew there wasn't much time left. And yet, there's a serenity in his face, a sense of something that's survived its own ruin.
Fran couldn't give two shits about that painting. — Nicole Krauss

The lawyer was Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of a venerated Viennese composer who had fled the rise of Hitler. The return of this ominous heir was anything but welcome. The painting Schoenberg sought was a shimmering gold masterpiece, painted a century earlier, by the artistic heretic Gustav Klimt. It was a portrait of a Viennese society beauty, Adele Bloch-Bauer. — Anne-Marie O'Connor

I was hoping to do an impressionist painting, but I wanted a good likeness and I wanted to create a feeling of the lady as a person, as a human being rather than as a figurehead for the monarchy and a pomp-and-circumstance sort of formal portrait. I wanted more of a relaxed portrait. — Rolf Harris

It is for the artist ... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features. — James Whistler

Lorelei sat at the window of her drawing room, painting in the fading daylight. It was yet another portrait of Jack, her favorite piece of fruit. — Kinley MacGregor

Painting has always been a means of self-expression for me. Therefore, I paint because I have to and need to, not necessarily because I want to. Subconsciously or not, the figures I paint are a reflection of myself and whatever mood I am in at the time, so every painting is in essence a self-portrait. — Lori Earley

I was good friends with Frank Sinatra, I heard Steve Kaufman painting his portrait, so I asked Steve to paint my portrait. — Lee Iacocca

The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination. — Benjamin Haydon

I was painting her portrait in the little studio, and when I came to the eyes I stopped, overcome by emotion, and said to her, 'Have you understood me?' She nodded affirmatively. 'Will you be my wife?' I asked. She made the same affirmative sign. — Jules Breton

Over the fireplace was the portrait of his father's first wife, Robert's mother, Olive. Jay hated that painting. There she was, solemn and saintly, looking down her long nose at all who came after her. When she caught a fever and died suddenly at the age of twenty-nine his father had remarried, but he never forgot his first love. He treated Jay's mother, Alicia, like a mistress, a plaything with no status and no rights; and he made Jay feel almost like an illegitimate son. Robert was the firstborn, the heir, the special one. Jay sometimes wanted to ask whether it had been an immaculate conception and a virgin birth. — Ken Follett

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk. — Charles Dickens

While I was up there, I happened across a couple of other interesting finds. One , curiously enough, is a portrait of your uncle. Did you put that up there?"
He scowled. "No. Foy and Starr must have done, since I ordered the damn thing burned. I'll tell Bell to toss it on the rubbish heap at his earlier convenience."
"Yes, well, much as I agree with the sentiments, and believe me I do, I suppose we ought to retain the painting in the interest of family history. I could scribble a note and paste it on the reverse saying what a vile man he is, just so future generations know."
He smirked. "Sidney would hate that. Yes, let's do it. — Tracy Anne Warren

Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift. — Brice Marden

When I was first painting the Monopoly guy I received a criticism. People said, "You're just painting cartoon characters, anyone can do that," but I'm actually a very skilled artist. That's why I released a Jack Nicholson portrait right after that that was very detailed in the face to show my skills. — Alec Monopoly

A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-portrait, reveals what an anxiety state really feels like. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of the mind, yet they are rarely brought together. — Eric Kandel

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait. — Blaise Pascal

If you can see a world within a portrait I would be happy with that. I don't want to tell the story with a painting, though. I'm trying to get away from the story- from the beginning and the ending. — Danny Fox

We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second - compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. — Aristotle.

The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias. — Susan Sontag

People think the painting is a portrait, but it isn't. Not really. He wasn't even in the field; he conjured it from a room in the house, an entirely different angle. He removed rocks and trees and outbuildings. The scale of the barn is wrong. And I am not that frail young thing, but a middle-aged spinster. It's not my body, really, and maybe not even my head. He — Christina Baker Kline

Do not think, as you read this, that I am painting my own portrait. Be patient, it is only my model. — Colette

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. — Michael Crichton

Jeanne, I fell asleep among the paintings, where I could sit for many days worshipping your portrait. I fell in love with your portrait, Jeanne, because it will never change. I have such a fear of seeing you grow old, Jeanne, I fell in love with an unchanging you that will never be taken away from me. I was wishing you would die, so that no one could take you away from me, and I would love the painting of you as you would look eternally. — Anais Nin

And if what they say is true
if every great painting is really a self-portrait
what, if anything, is Fabritius saying about himself? — Donna Tartt

You have bits of canvas that are unpainted and you have these thick stretcher bars. So you see that a painting is an object; that it's not a window into something - you're not looking at a landscape, you're not looking at a portrait, but you're looking at a painting. It's basically: A painting is a painting is a painting. And it's what Frank Stella said famously: What you see is what you see. — Frank Stella

True Discipleship makes a man and woman a project or an portrait painting to completion

With a careful detail and awareness of every stroke of the brush until the vision comes to pass — Louis

You are the greatest poem ever written.
You are the greatest song ever sung.
You are the greatest portrait ever painted.
You are the greatest symphony ever composed.
You are the greatest act ever performed.
You are the greatest masterpiece ever created. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Painting someone's portrait is, of course, an impossible task. What an absurd idea to try and distil a human being, the most complex organism on the planet, into flicks, washes, and blobs of paint on a two-dimensional surface. — David Cobley

Kolchak nodded, 'Right, because that would make sense." He took off his hat and crumpled it against his hip. 'When I lived in Seattle, I met a man who had been killing people for a hundred years easily. I nearly got arrested painting on his portrait in the bank he owned, just to match his face to the hundred-year-old shot I had of him with a beard. It's possible.'

'Why didn't you just take a picture of the painting and scribble on the picture?'

'It was a gesture,' Kolchak wrung his hands, 'and anyway that's not the point.' ("Wet Dog of Galveston") — Jason Henderson

He's often wished that he could capture the full essence of each woman's laugh on canvas, but he settles instead, on watching how, when a woman chuckles, her head moves slightly to the left or right so that the light grazes it at a new angle and creates a new pattern of highlight and shadow. It's this subtle shifting that he finds astounding - how everything and nothing can be written on a face through its lines, through the way skin around the eyes crinkle or how the shifting of a mouth belies joy or sarcasm or simple placation. He wonders what Vermeer might have said to that girl with the pearl earring, what words could have stirred in her that wanton expression, because even amateurs understand that faces allow an entry point and that negative space is the key to any good painting: what isn't included is sometimes more important than what is. — Adam Gallari

I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women ... There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night ... Who ever wants to know something about me ... ought to look carefully at my pictures. — Gustav Klimt

A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth. — John Singer Sargent

SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air — Jandy Nelson