Portraiture Quotes
Portraiture Quote of the day
A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.
Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.
It's really absurd to make... a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it... But then all of a sudden, it was even more absurd not to do it.
We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.
We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.
The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting.
I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.
Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.
Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only the surface... .
There's no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other. There's always a difference. We all have a more or less crooked nose and an irregular mouth.
The self-portrait is an act of objectifying the self and in that regard is a unique form of portraiture.
Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls... if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.
I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.
It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me. Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
Portraiture keeps me humble. It's simple and straightforward. There is nothing more interesting I can make up than the figure sitting right in front of me.
Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.
When one starts from a portrait and seeks by successive eliminations to find pure form... one inevitably ends up with an egg.
I don't have lots of things in the background. I do like large faces, I find them strong and contemporary.
To get someone to pose, you have to be very good friends and above all speak the language.
I will tell you something else: it is a major responsibility not only of portraiture but of all human communication for each of us to help everyone else discover the best that is in him.
I never wanted to be commissioned to paint portraits. I like to choose my own subject and make a character study from it.
Don't listen to the fools who say that pictures of people can be of no consequence, or that painting is dead. There is much to be done.
I shall praise those faces which seem to project out of the picture as though they were sculptured, and I shall censure those faces in which I see no art but that of outline.
Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven't I the right to paint you as I want?
I always work directly from life, partly because I really enjoy having an interaction with the person in front of me but also because I love having a direct response to shape and color.
If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.
It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in His own essential portraiture and image in sanctifying us.
I have a really strong suspicion of the romantic nature of portraiture, the idea that you're telling some essential truth about the interior lives of your subject.
Alas, it is just a single image - an extended moment perhaps. Unlike a biography, a portrait cannot present the many differing moments that make up a personality.
But eventually I moved the portraiture into the smaller clay things which gave them more of a caricature look to them, rather than a characterization.
I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits.
Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin.
My work doesn't speak about individuals (it's not portraiture in the traditional sense), it tries to speak about life in general in cities of the West - which is where I live and what I understand.
Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.
A photographic close-up is perhaps the purest form of portraiture, creating a confrontation between the viewer and the subject that daily interaction makes impossible, or at least impolite.
What I remember about being painted was a very severe atmosphere. I remember her intensity and sharp glance.
God often lays the sum of His amazing providences in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colors, on which he intends to draw the portraiture of some illustrious beauty.
When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.
