Portraits Quotes - Page 8

• More than any other contemporary British playwright, Tom Stoppard populates his plays -- from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to The Invention of Love (his portrait of the poet and scholar A. E. Housman) -- with characters from life and literature. But one cannot always tell the difference between those who are real and those who are imaginary.

  Mel Gussow

  Real, Character, Play

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• I make figurative portraits as a way to explore theories of quantum physics.

  Oliver Jeffers

  Way, Physics, Quantum

  "Locating Loss with Oliver Jeffers". Interview with Angela Ledgerwood, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 20, 2014.

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• I am living a new and exalted life of late. It steeps me in a sacred rapture to see a portrait develop and take soul under my hand. First, I throw off a study - just a mere study, a few apparently random lines - and to look at it you would hardly ever suspect who it was going to be; even I cannot tell, myself.

  Mark Twain

  Hands, Soul, Looks

  Mark Twain (1933). “Mark Twain's works”

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• Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.

  Jamie Wyeth

  Portraiture, Paint, Subjects

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• The self-portrait is an act of objectifying the self and in that regard is a unique form of portraiture.

  Burton Silverman

  Unique, Self, Portraiture

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• We only serve as a model for the portrait of our fame.

  Jean Cocteau

  Fame, Models

  Jean Cocteau (1990). “Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure”, Peter Owen Publishers

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• Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Writing, Self, Trying

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2764, Delphi Classics

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• My waking thoughts are all of thee. Your portrait and the remembrance of last night's delirium have robbed my senses of repose. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what an extraordinary influence you have over my heart. Are you vexed? Do I see you sad? Are you ill at ease? My soul is broken with grief, and there is no rest for your lover.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Sweet, Grief, Heart

  "Napoleon's Letters to Josephine 1796-1812" edited by Henry Foljambe Hall, 1901.

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• Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.

  Edgar Degas

  Expression, People, Giving

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• I don't use names or captions for my many portraits of politicians and authors for newspapers. The drawing has to be self-explanatory, so I spend a lot of time sketching to find an idea and an angle that is clear.

  Siegfried Woldhek

  Names, Ideas, Drawing

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• I have no little insight into the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits obliged to face each other for ever--prints put together in portfolios.

  Robert Browning

  Book, People, Feelings

  Robert Browning (2015). “Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett”, p.267, e-artnow sro

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• Portraits are to daily faces As an evening west To a fine, pedantic sunshine In a satin vest.

  Emily Dickinson

  Sunshine, West, Faces

  Emily Dickinson, Ralph William Franklin (1999). “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.84, Harvard University Press

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• Satan was a blunderer ... who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him, and his portrait would have been more flattering.

  George Eliot

  Satan, Made, Should

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.1550, Delphi Classics

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• I never wanted to be commissioned to paint portraits. I like to choose my own subject and make a character study from it.

  William Dobell

  Character, Portraiture, Study

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• my sitters get tired waiting for commissioned portraits. If they commission me they have to wait years sometimes because I discard so many.

  William Dobell

  Tired, Years, Waiting

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• I would paint a portrait which would bring the tears, had I canvas for it, and the scene should be -- solitude, and the figures -- solitude -- and the lights and shades, each a solitude.

  Emily Dickinson

  Light, Solitude, Tears

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• When I paint a portrait I want to know more than just the looks of the person. I want to know how they live and what their feelings are... It then becomes more than just physiognomy, but the feel of the person.

  Jamie Wyeth

  Feelings, Looks, Portraiture

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• I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another.

  Mark Twain

  Believe, Canvas, Trouble

  Mark Twain (1935). “The complete short stories and humorous sketches of Mark Twain”

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• I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.

  Francis Bacon

  Photography, Taken, Models

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• In my portraits I try to avoid the fleeting expression and vivacity of a snapshot.

  Bill Brandt

  Expression, Trying, Fleeting

  Bill Brandt (1993). “Bill Brandt: Selected Texts & Bibliography”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• The most adorable thing about Toronto is that she remains fiercely aloof and indifferent to the fads and entrepreneurial fevers of her lovers. She is intractably herself, admissive to the most vagrant, sober in a way that gets misinterpreted as stodginess. Her generosity extends to the meek as well as the gold diggers. Mercifully, she doesn't give a hoot about our portraits of her, but just waits, patiently, for our affection and citizenship.

  Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

  Giving, Adorable, Generosity

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• If you're a guest [at my $113 million house], you'll be able to call up on screens throughout the house almost any image you like - presidential portraits, reproductions of High Renaissance paintings, pictures of sunsets, airplanes, skiers in the Andes, a rare French stamp, the Beatles in 1965.

  Bill Gates

  Airplane, Sunset, Presidential

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• Here and there, in some older houses, old faded daguerreotypes still hang on the walls... They seem to us to be very simple... compared with the artistic and skillful portraits made in later days... Here was a photograph that at one time had been the last word, a very modern portrait... Today it is just a part of cultural history. The small yellowed surface has acquired depth, an admonishing perspective. We hold in our hand a symbol of the structure and ideology of an epoch.

  Isak Dinesen

  Wall, Simple, Hands

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• Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?

  Johnny Carson

  Artist, Police, President

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• A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.

  Richard Avedon

  Facts, Opinion, Occasions

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