Top 27 John Constable Quotes
#1. Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?
John Constable
#2. When we speak of the perfection of art, we must recollect what the materials are with which a painter contends with nature. For the light of the sun he has but patent yellow and white lead - for the darkest shade, umber or soot.
John Constable
#3. When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.
John Constable
#4. Only think that I am now writing in a room full of Claudes ... almost of the summit of my earthly ambitions.
John Constable
#5. A sketch will not serve more than one state of mind & will not serve to drink at again & again - in a sketch there is nothing but the one state of mind - that which you were in at the time.
John Constable
#6. I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised.
John Constable
#7. An artist who is self-taught is taught by a very ignorant person indeed.
John Constable
#8. I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
John Constable
#9. We must bear in recollection that the sentiment of the picture is that of solemnity, not gaiety & nothing garish, but the contrary - yet it must be bright, clear, alive fresh, and all the front seen.
John Constable
#10. The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from one another.
John Constable
#12. The climax of absurdity to which art may be carried when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher ...
John Constable
#13. Turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy.
John Constable
#14. Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher about humanity.
John Constable
#15. It is the soul that sees; the outward eyes
Present the object, but the Mind descries.
We see nothing till we truly understand it.
John Constable
#16. Verse is a mechanism by which we can create interpretative illusions suggesting profoundities of response and understanding which far exceed the engagement or research of the writer.
John Constable
#17. Light - dews - breezes - bloom - and freshness; not one of which ... has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.
John Constable
#18. I do not consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas.
John Constable
#19. But You know Landscape is my mistress - 'tis to her that I look for fame - and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.
John Constable
#20. There has never been a boy painter, nor can there be. The art requires a long apprenticeship, being mechanical, as well as intellectual.
John Constable
#21. I know very well what I am about and that my skies have not been neglected, though they often failed in execution - and often no doubt from over anxiety about them ...
John Constable
#22. The world is rid of Lord Byron, but the deadly slime of his touch still remains.
John Constable
#23. I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much ... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass.
John Constable
#24. The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork.those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful.
John Constable
#25. The sky is the source of light in Nature and it governs everything.
John Constable
#26. A gentleman's park is my aversion. It is not beauty because it is not nature.
John Constable
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
