I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train our hand only to make a likeness, whereas from sculptures we learn to represent both likeness and correct incidence of light.

-Alberti, Leon Battista
  On Painting (translated by Cecil Grayson).

Only when you are moved by a painting should you buy it. Being moved is what collecting is all about.

-Annenberg,Walter H
  In Connoisseur, Feb.

   Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.

-Berger,John Peter
  In New Statesman and Society,15  Jul.

Painting, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

What has Reasoning to do with the Art of Painting?

-Blake,William
c.1808  Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses.

The painting of sounds, noises and smells calls for: 1. Reds, rrrrreds, the rrrrrreddest rrrrrrreds that shouuuuuuut. 2.Greens, that can never be greener, greeeeeeeeeeeens that screeeeeeam, yellows, as violent as can be: polenta yellows, saffron yellows, brass yellows.

-Carra'  , Carlo
  In the Manifesto of Futurist Painting, quoted in Futurismo e Futurismi (1986).

This is the truth! In order to achieve this total painting, whichrequirestheactive cooperationof all thesenses, a painting which is a plastic state of mind of the universal, you must paint, as drunkards sing and vomit, sounds, noises and smells!

-Carra'  , Carlo
  In the Manifesto of Futurist Painting, quoted in Futurismo e Futurismi (1986).

A painting is merely the image of a tree, a man, or any other object reflected in a fountain. The difference between a painting and sculpture is the difference between a shadow and the thing which casts it.

-Cellini, Benvenuto
  Letter to Benedetto Varchi.

Painters who arenotcolourists produce illumination and not painting.

-Delacroix, (Ferdinand Victor) Euge'  ne
  The Journal of Euge'  ne Delacroix (translated by W Pach, 1948).

Remember that a paintingöbefore it is a battlehorse, a nude woman, or someanecdoteöis essentiallya flat surface covered with colours assembled ina certainorder.

-Deniehy, Daniel Henry
  The¤  ories:1890^1910.

Theartof painting cannot betrulyjudgedsave bysuchas are themselves good painters; from others verily it is hidden even as a strange tongue.

-Du« r er, Albrecht
c.1512  Quoted in William Martin Conway Literary Remains of Albrecht Du«  rer (1889).

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
  The Conduct of Life,'Wealth'.

Yo soy un artista. El placer de la carne le resta fuerzas a mi vocacio¤ n  picto¤  rica, prefiero sentir que los jugos de mi sexo fluyen hacia un cuadro, lo irrigan, lo fertilizan, lo realzan; ca¤  strame el goce de la carne, satisfa¤  ceme el goce del arte. Iamanartist.The pleasure ofthefleshrobsstrengthfrom myartistic vocation, I prefer to feel my sexual juices flow toward a painting, wash over it, fertilize it, realize it; the delights of the flesh castrate me, the delights of art satisfy me.

-Fuentes, Carlos
  Terra nostra,'El cronista'.

I wish you would recollect that Painting and Punctuality mix like Oil and Vinegar, and that Genius and regularity are utter Enemies and must be to the end of time.

-Gainsborough,Thomas
  Letter to Edward Stratford,1 May, excusing himself for not yet finishing the portrait of him and his wife.

You maydream freely whenyou listen tomusic as well as when you look at painting.When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.

-Gauguin, Paul
c.1888  Notes Synthe¤  tiques, quoted in  J Rewald Gauguin (1938).

Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

-Hughes, Robert Studley Forrest
  In Time, 30 Dec.

   You can't learn architecture any more than you can learn a sense of music or of painting.You shouldn't talk about art, you should do it.

-Johnson, Philip Cortelyou
  'The Seven Crutches of  Architecture', informal talk to students, School of  Architectural Design, Harvard University, 7 Dec. Published in Perspecta 3 (1955).

   I do not find any difference between painting and sculpture except that the sculptor pursues his work with greater physical fatigue than the painter and the painter pursues his with greater mental fatigue.

-Leonardo daVinci
Treatise on Painting (published1651, translatedby A P McMahon, 1956).

  Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

-Leonardo daVinci
Quoted in J Pand Irma  A Richter The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (2 vols,1939).

Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting.

-Leonardo daVinci
Quoted in Irma  A Richter (ed) Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1977).