I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow

Nature is usually wrong.

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

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.

Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.