Art

"Sixtenth century represents the zenith of Ottoman miniature painting. During this time, the influences of the late 15th and early 16th centuries—the encounters with western European portraiture, the growing emphasis on historiographical painting, the impact of ;nautical cartography, and the enduring influence of the Persian legacy – began to crystallize into distinctly Ottoman styles and genres."

"Paint me as I am," said Cromwell, "Rough with age and gashed with wars; Show my visage as you find it, Less than truth my soul abhors."

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."

"Hard features every bungler can command: To draw true beauty shows a master's hand."

"Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling."

"A picture is a poem without words."

"If anyone shall endeavor to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colors which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!"

"What avails, then, the folly of the painter, who from sinful love of gain depicts that which should not be depicted—that is, with his polluted hands he tries to fashion that which should only be believed in the heart and confessed with the mouth? He makes an image and calls it Christ."

"If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer."

"Matisse began to exploit the more abstract, and... vibrant, oppositions of red-green. ...[T]he properties of colour itself, and the interactions of colour with their power to create light, instead of reproducing the effect of light, were the basis of Matisse's mature art. Colour no longer stood for, or symbolized, anything external to painting itself; it was colour as colour."

"For Matisse in particular it often served to separate areas of contrasting colour, assisting in the vibrant activation of such juxtaposed blocks. While the Impressionist use of colour contrasts had concentrated mainly on the complimentary yellow and violet-blue pair, because these most aptly imitated the effects of sunlight and shadow in nature, Matisse shifted to the red-green complementaries. This pair creates the greatest optical vibration when juxtaposed because the two colours are closest in tone of any on the colour circle. As the eye tires of reading, say, the red as dominant, the green at once appears to come forward and dominate. This vacillation of the eye between the two colours vying for dominance sets up an optical vibration, which enhances the colour properties of each simultaneously. By focusing upon the red-green pair—which Matisse often biased towards pink-turquoise—he avoided the emphasis on the naturalistic representation associated with the Impressionists' use of colour. It was also a pair which, again because of tonal equivalence, affirmed the flatness of the picture surface by negating the illusion of depth."

"Lautrec was greatly influenced by the techniques, style and subject matter of Degas, who was a close neighbor between 1887 and 1891. ...Like Degas, Lautrec experimented with painting with which was called peinture à l'essence. In Degas' method, oil was drawn out of his colours by placing them on blotting paper. Then the chalky paint was diluted with turpentine and applied like a wash to his support. Because the turpentine spirit evaporated quickly, the colours dried rapidly, so that the paint surface could be reworked and built up without enormous delays. Unlike paint applied thinly in glazes, with this technique the colour dries mat, and has a chalky surface only thinly and sparely coloured."

"Pisarro explained the Neo-Impressionist theories to his dealer Durand-Ruel in a letter written towards the end of 1886. He stressed the importance of Seurat's role as inventor of the theory, and described the new function of colour, which replaced the mechanical mixtures of pigments with optical mixtures, where colours partially fused in the spectator's eye. The component parts of each optical colour mixture were to be painted in separate touches so that they retained their colour purity. When colours were mixed on the palette, they could only be combined with close neighbors on the colour circle, so as to avoid excessive dulling of the hues. Pissaro noted that the great colour theorists who had influenced Seurat's thinking were Chevreul, the Scott Maxwell, and the American Ogden Rood. Optical colour mixtures, they argued, were more luminous than mixed pigments."

"From the mingled strength of shade and light A new creation rises to my sight, Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow, So warm with light his blended colors glow. * * * * * * The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring."

"In the Seljuk period, figurative themes of Turco-Mongol character are some what apparent in all the minor arts in both Iran and Iraq. The true Persian miniature, however, which is indisputably the most perfect figurative art on the soil of Islam, did not come into the world until after the conquest of Iran by the Mongols, and more precisely under the rule of the Īl-Khāns (1256). It is modeled upon Chinese painting with its perfect blend of calligraphy and illustration...The link between writing and image remains fundamental to Persian miniatures, which, belongs, as a whole, to the art of books; all the famous miniaturists were calligraphers before becoming painters."

"As certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio."

"In general, just as painters in working from models constantly gaze at their exemplar and thus strive to transfer the expression of the original to their own artistry, so too he who is anxious to make himself perfect in all the kinds of virtue must gaze upon the lives of the saints as upon statues, so to speak, that move and act, and must make their excellence his own by imitation."

"Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast And those who paint 'em truest praise 'em most."

"Mughal painting is a particular style of South Asian painting, generally confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums, which emerged from Persian miniature painting, with Indian Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist influences, and developed largely in the court of the Mughal Empire (16th - 19th centuries), and later spread to other Indian courts, both Muslim and Hindu, and later Sikh."

"Once again, I experienced that overwhelming joy in the universe that I had felt in London outside the V and A. But this time, my consciousness of the world seemed larger, more complex. It was the mystic's sensation of oneness, of everything blending into everything else. Everything I looked at reminded me of something else, which also became present to my consciousness, as if I were simultaneously seeing a million worlds and smelling a million scents and hearing a million sounds—not mixed up, but each separate and clear. I was overwhelmed with a sense of my smallness in the face of this vast, beautiful, objective universe, this universe whose chief miracle is that it exists, as well as myself. It is no dream, but a great garden in which life is trying to obtain a foothold. I experienced a desire to burst into tears of gratitude; then I controlled it, and the feeling subsided into a calm sense of immense, infinite beauty."

"A little garden Little Jowett made, And fenced it with a little palisade; If you would know the mind of little Jowett, This little garden don't a little show it."

"The splash and stir Of fountains spouted up and showering down In meshes of the jasmine and the rose: And all about us peal'd the nightingale, Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare."

"The garden lies, A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream."

"A little garden square and wall'd; And in it throve an ancient evergreen, A yew-tree, and all round it ran a walk Of shingle, and a walk divided it."

"And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure."

"I walk down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair, and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths."

"An album is a garden, not for show Planted, but use; where wholesome herbs should grow."

"One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth."

"My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound!"

"My garden is a lovesome thing—God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern grot— The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not.— Not God in gardens! When the sun is cool? Nay, but I have a sign! 'Tis very sure God walks in mine."

"God Almighty first planted a garden."

"There was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch. Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his crag-bound head against the sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes.Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden. Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches, and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House."

"[N]one but a poet could have made such a garden."

"My garden painted o'er With Nature's hand, not Art's."

"God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain."

"Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit."

"Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society."

"Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like."

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

"When on my three-foot stool I sit."

"A three-legged table, O ye fates!"

"Necessity invented stools, Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, And Luxury the accomplish'd Sofa last."

"Ingenious Fancy, never better pleased Than when employ'd t' accommodate the fair, Heard the sweet moan of pity, and devised The soft settee; one elbow at each end, And in the midst an elbow it received, United yet divided, twain at once."

"Joint-stools were then created; on three legs Upborne they stood. Three legs upholding firm A massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred sat."

"I love it, I love it, and who shall dare To chide me for loving that old arm-chair?"

"Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain."

"We have descended into the garden and caught 300 slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and squalid in gardening. It makes it so like life."

"Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown."

"A gardener's greatest skill isn't control, or planning, or power... It's listening. The plants know exactly what to do, and will tell you what they need to do it. All you must do is listen......and provide."

"Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden."