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

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

As light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. And that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination.

Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

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

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

Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong.