John Constable quotes
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John Constable Quotes



Quotes by John Constable - (17 quotes)

John Constable - From the Anxiety category:

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)

John Constable - From the Beauty category:

There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, – light, shade, and perpective will always make it beautiful. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Commerce category:

-on selling his sketches...
I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Communication category:

Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher about humanity. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Education category:

An artist who is self-taught is taught by a very ignorant person indeed. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Exhibitions category:

-on the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition...
The time of year when the devil comes and spews art over London. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Fashion category:

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)

John Constable - From the Imitation category:

Imitators always make the defects of the original more conspicuous. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Light category:

The sky is the source of light in Nature and it governs everything. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Masters category:

-on J.M.W. Turner...
...Turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Materials category:

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)

John Constable - From the Painting category:

I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Painting category:

Painting is but another word for feeling. (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Perfection category:

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)

John Constable - From the Philosophy category:

Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments? (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Subject category:

I associate my 'careless boyhood' with all that lies on the banks of the Stour. Those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful – that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil... (John Constable)

John Constable - From the Understanding category:

We see nothing truly until we understand it. (John Constable)