It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

Can't a person be born where they want to be born?

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.