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 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.

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.

People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.

Nature is usually wrong.

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony