Singer Sargent Quotes & Sayings

I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it. — John Singer Sargent

I don't dig beneath the surface for things that don't appear before my own eyes. — John Singer Sargent

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend. — John Singer Sargent

If you begin with the middle-tone and work up from it toward the darks so that you deal last with your highest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents. — John Singer Sargent

'Impressionism' was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision). — John Singer Sargent

Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks. — Claude Monet

A person with normal eyesight would have nothing to know in the way of 'Impressionism' unless he were in a blinding light or in the dusk or dark. — John Singer Sargent

A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth. — John Singer Sargent

No small dabs of colour - you want plenty of paint to paint with. — John Singer Sargent

Mine is the horny hand of toil. — John Singer Sargent

When he was very excited, [John Singer] Sargent would rush at his canvas with his brush poised for attack, yelling, 'Demons, demons, demons!' When he was particularly angry or frustrated, he expressed these feelings with 'Damn,' the only curse he allowed himself. He once had the expletive inscribed on a rubber stamp so he could have the satisfaction of pounding it on a piece of paper. — Deborah Davis

An artist painting a picture should have at his side a man with a club to hit him over the head when the picture is finished. — John Singer Sargent

The thicker you paint, the more it flows. — John Singer Sargent

Color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire. — John Singer Sargent

You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh. — John Singer Sargent

The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism - Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860 - it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason. — John Singer Sargent

Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. — John Singer Sargent

It is certain that at certain times talent entirely overcomes thought or poetry. — John Singer Sargent

I do not judge, I only chronicle. — John Singer Sargent

Make the best of an emergency. — John Singer Sargent

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