Portraits Quotes - Page 3

• A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed

  Richard Avedon

  Knows

  29 Copy quote

• Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

  Oscar Wilde

  Pain, Oblivion, Modern

  Oscar Wilde (2004). “The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings”, p.316, Penguin

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• The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.

  Benjamin Haydon

  Fighting, Men, People

  7 Copy quote

• I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Doe, Looks

  Quoted in Esar A Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951).

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• I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, People, Wish

  "The naked and the living" by Peter Conrad, www.theguardian.com. June 8, 2002.

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• Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

  George Eliot

  Beautiful, Truth, Giving

  George Eliot (2016). “Daniel Deronda”, p.133, George Eliot

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• I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

  Gertrude Stein

  Literature, Mouths, Really Great

  Gertrude Stein, Robert Bartlett Haas (1971). “A primer for the gradual understanding of Gertrude Stein”

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• It is for the artist... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.

  James Whistler

  Artist, Men, One Day

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.107, Courier Corporation

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• Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

  Samuel Butler

  Inspirational, Motivational, Music

  Samuel Butler (2016). “The Way of All Flesh”, p.57, Samuel Butler

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• I 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

  Hate, Believe, Men

  44 Copy quote

• There is nothing that special to see when looking at me.

  Gustav Klimt

  Special

  Gustav Klimt, Ankriktip, Abelia Serotina (2016). “Gustav Klimt Artworks”, p.29, Book and Magazine

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• I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.

  William Klein

  Photography, Cutting, Self

  15 Copy quote

• A letter is the portrait of the soul.

  Josephine de Beauharnais

  Soul, Letters

  29 Copy quote

• I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.

  Duane Michals

  Thinking, People, Challenges

  4 Copy quote

• Portrait The world spreads out on either side no farther than the heart is wide.

  Emily Dickinson

  Women, Heart, World

  6 Copy quote

• The smiling portrait of you is still hanging on my frowning wall.

  Jimi Hendrix

  Wall, Sadness, Frowning

  Jimi Hendrix (2013). “Starting At Zero: His Own Story”, p.103, A&C Black

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• Sometimes I spit on my mother's portrait for pleasure.

  Salvador Dali

  Mother, Sometimes, Pleasure

  20 Copy quote

• When you do not like human beings, you cannot make good portraits.

  Gisele Freund

  Humans, Human Beings

  6 Copy quote

• The diagram of the house is a portrait of the family, a true portrait, whether it's sad or happy.

  Jimenez Lai

  House, Diagrams

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.

  Saul Leiter

  Beauty, Photography, Art

  "In No Great Hurry: Film Review" by John DeFore, www.hollywoodreporter.com. January 6, 2014.

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• Life wanted faces that would express what we wanted to tell. Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way.

  Margaret Bourke-White

  Photography, Speaks Out, Ties

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• Great portrait photographers are great mythologists.

  Roland Barthes

  Photographer

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• The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Special, Quality

  Volkmar Essers, Henri Matisse (1993). “Matisse”, Taschen

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• Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.

  Sol LeWitt

  Art, Real, Drawing

  Sol LeWitt (1995). “Sol Lewitt: critical texts”, Power House Books

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• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is in fact the gestation of a soul.

  Richard Ellmann

  Artist, Men, Soul

  6 Copy quote