The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

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.

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.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow

Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?

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