We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.

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

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.

Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

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.

A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.