It is certain that at certain times talent entirely overcomes thought or poetry.
John Singer SargentThe habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism - Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860 - it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.
John Singer SargentA person with normal eyesight would have nothing to know in the way of 'Impressionism' unless he were in a blinding light or in the dusk or dark.
John Singer SargentCultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents.
John Singer SargentI hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it.
John Singer Sargent