Printmakers

"I got sick and tired of all that Purity! Wanted to tell stories.. [Guston's quote in 1967, referring to his swift from Abstract expressionism to figurative painting]"

"I maintain that the frustration is an important, almost crucial, ingredient. I think that the best painting involves frustration. The point about the late Rembrandt [paintings] is not that it's satisfying but on the contrary that it is disturbing and frustrating. Because really, what he [Rembrandt] has done is to eliminate any plane - anything between that image and you. The Van Dyck [portrait] hasn't. It says [only] I'm a painting. The Rembrandt says: I am not a painting, I am a real man. But he is not a real man either. What is it then, that you are looking at?"

"What I really want to do, it seems, is to paint a single form in the middle of a canvas. ..That's all a painter is, an image maker, is he not? And one would be a fool, some kind of fool, to want to paint a picture. The most powerful instinct is to paint a single form in its continuity, which is after all what a face is. This happens constantly on a picture. I remember last year I became so nervous about what I was doing that I finally reduce it down to the can on the palette with brushes in it. Well, that's real, tat can with brushes. And I painted the an with brushes sticking in it, and I couldn't tolerate it. I couldn't face it. It was as if it didn't contain enough of my thoughts or feelings about it.. ..I became signs. Exactly.. ..It seemed to become signs and symbols and I don't like signs."

"Sylvester: What about figuration in a more literal sense?"

"You use things; the idea is, of course, to eliminate things [in making a picture]. And just as fifteen or eighteen years ago [when Guston made whole figurative series of children's pictures: 'all sort of props and so on'] I stretched out to get that, - put it in and took it out - to get that look in that's kid's eye and the way his mouth was open or wasn't - I mean a very particular kind of look - I'd do the same now. In other words, I can't find any freedom in abstract painting [but Guston did abstract painting in 1960 - till in 1967 he moved to figuration]. I'am just as stuck with locations, a few areas of colour in relation to some kind of totality that I want, as I was before. And so the problem of figuration is somehow irrelevant to me. I think some of the best painting done in New York today is figuration, but it's not recognised as such.. .Well I think of my pictures as a kind of figuration.. .I think every good painter here in New York really paints a self-portrait.."

"Actually, one of the real problems that always bothers me [in creating a painting] is sustaining a feeling. I mean, when I look at Poussin now, well, I think that's the most incredible thing to maintain the feeling for a year, however long it took Poussin, I'm telling you, to paint this vast structure. Bur perhaps that is not given to us now. I don't know... .Actually all all modern art puzzles me. I don't understand it. II really don't. I don't know whether it is fragmentary [as David Sylvester the interviewer suggested]. I have a sickening nostalgia for this other state of sustaining a feeling for months, being able to construct and build a picture. Well Mondrian, I think, did that, of course. He was almost one of the last artists to do that. I wish I could get there."

"There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art: That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, and therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities', which forces painting’s continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no 'wiggly or straight lines' or any other elements. You work until you vanish. The picture isn’t finished if they are seen."

"[Painting is..] a kind of war between the moment and the pull of memory.(quote in 1959)"

"What is seen and called the picture is what remains – an evidence. Even as one travels in painting towards a state of 'unfreedom' where only certain things can happen, unaccountably the unknown and free must appear. Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanished and the paint falls into positions that feel destined. The very matter of painting – its pigment and space – is so resistant to the will, so disinclined to assert its plane and remain still. Painting seems like impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light. Which must be because of the narrow passage from a diagramming to that other state – corporeality. In this sense, to paint is a possessing rather than a picturing."

"O’Hara was in his most non-stop way of talking, saying that the pictures put him in mind of Tiepolo [Spanish wall-painter, c. 1750]. Certain cupola frescoes. Suddenly I was working in an ancient building, a warehouse facing the Giudecca. The loft over the firehouse was transformed. It was filled with light reflected from the canal. [quote in 1955]"

"I paint people not because of what they are like... but how they happen to be."

"URGENT SUBTLE CONCISE ROBUST"

"I am only interested in painting the actual person; in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong."

"When I look at a body I know it gives me choices of what to put in a painting; what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so."

"My colour has no symbolic function whatever. I don't want any colour to be noticeable. I want the colour to be the colour of life, so that you would notice it as being irregular if it changed. I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent. I don't want people to say, "Oh, what was that red or that blue picture of yours, I've forgotten what it was.""

"I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case."

"I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen … that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it."

"He had a boat at Richmond.. ..I have seen him start on his sketching expeditions. From his boat he painted on a large canvas direct from Nature. Till you have seen these sketches, you know nothing of Turner's powers. There are about two score of these large subjects, rolled up, and now national property. In my judgment these are among his very finest productions: no retouching, everything firmly in its place.. ..Turner's mind was so comprehensive that he could not carry out the detail, though he was far from despising it; and I was told by [[w:Henry Howard (artist)|[Henry] Howard]] he would spend hours sketching a stone. There is a red sunset (simply the sky) among the rolls; the finest sky, to my mind, ever put on canvas."

"About this time [c. 1812] Turner removed to Twickenham, where he purchased Sandycomb Lodge, near [[w:Richmond Bridge, London|Richmond Bridge [London].]] It was an unpretending little place, and the rooms were small. There were several models of ships in glass cases, to which Turner had painted a sea and background. They much resembled the large vessels in his sea pieces. Richmond scenery greatly influenced his style. The Scotch firs (or stone-pine) around are in most of his large classical subjects, and Richmond landscape is decidedly the basis of 'The Rise of Carthage'. Here he had a long strip of land, planted by him so thickly with willows that his father, who delighted in the garden, complained that it was a mere osier-bed. Turner used to refresh his eye with the run of the boughs from his sitting-room window."

"The old man [Turner's father] latterly was his son's willing slave, and had to strain his pictures, and varnish them when finished; which made Turner say that his father began and finished his pictures for him. But I doubt if he varnished many pictures; few of them, I believe, were varnished at all; still he was of great assistance to his son, and I think it was Mr. Turner the engraver who told me that, once making bold to enter Turner's studio, he found the old man on his knees colouring a canvas, when Turner made his appearance, and good-humouredly trundled out the visitor [Turner, the engraver], telling him he was on forbidden ground. Turner was much attached to his father, and at his death stayed with us a few days at Heston for change of scene. He was fearfully out of spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child.. .Turner never appeared the same man after his father's death [in 1829]; his family was broken up.."

"At the beginning of the century Turner had a place at Hammersmith Mall [West-London, from c. 1802], The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of his best pictures. It was here that my father [James Trimmer], who then resided at Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he [Turner] remarked that lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be painted anywhere."

"On one occasion [1840's] I had the audacity to ask him [Turner] if he painted his clouds from nature.. .The words had hardly passed my lips when I saw my gaucherie. I was afraid I had roused a thunderstorm; however, my lucky star predominated.. ..after having eyed me for a few moments with a slight frown, he growled out 'How would you have me paint them?' Then seizing upon his fishing-rod, and turning upon his heel, he marched indignantly out of the house to the water's-edge."

"During twenty-five years, he [Turner] indulged the pleasing hope that he should leave a testimony of his good will and compassion for unfortunate artists. To his intimate friends he constantly talked of the best mode of leaving property for the use of the unsuccessful; he wished his survivors to employ his property in building houses for the above-named purpose; he did not like to call them almshouses, but had selected the denomination of 'Turner's Gift'."

"Turner's late peculiarities in painting arose from the neglect of his earlier works by the public; if he had been encouraged at the time he painted the 'Carthage', the 'Tenth Plague' and the 'Garden of the Hesperides' he would not have become eccentric in his art; his preference for the style of picture last named is proved by his leaving the pictures of the 'Rise of Carthage' and the 'Dutch Coast' to the National Gallery, on the condition of their being hung between the 'Seaport' and the 'Mill' by Claude Lorraine [strongly admired by Turner]. His latter style, though possibly extravagant, was only an excess in representing the developments of nature; he exaggerated all he saw, but the foundation was truth; the vivid and warm colouring of nature he painted with the deepest reds and yellows, the greys he attempted to imitate with blues of too strong a tint, yet the whole was true in principle, in general and particular."

"The zealous care with which Turner endeavoured to do his duty, is proved by a large existing series of drawings, exquisitely tinted, and often completely coloured, all by his own hand, of the most difficult perspective subjects—illustrating not only directions of line, but effects of light - with a care and completion which would put the work of any ordinary teacher to utter shame. In teaching generally — he would neither waste time nor spare it - he would look over a student's drawing at the Academy, point to a defective part, make a scratch on the paper at the side, say nothing. If the student saw what was wanted, and did it, Turner was delighted; but if the student could not follow. Turner left him."

"Mr. Turner only displayed in the closest intimacy the shrewdness of his observation and the playfulness of his wit. Everywhere he kept back much of what was in him, and while the keenest intelligence, mingled with a strong tinge of satire, animated his brisk countenance, it seemed to amuse him to be but half understood. His nearest social ties were those formed in the Royal Academy, of which he was by far the oldest member, and to whose interest he was most warmly attached."

"wherever he [Turner] could get a few minutes, he had his little sketch book out, many being remarkable, but he seemed to tire at last and got careless.. .I don't remember colouring coming out till we got into Switzerland. [When it did, Turner used a sponge to create 'misty and aerial effects']."

"Turner was always, from his youth, fond of stones.. .But that gorge [which Turner passed during his trip in the diligence - South-Switzerland, North of Milan].. ..delighted him exceedingly.. ..[and] was still not well out of his head when the diligence stopped at the bottom of the hill, just at that turn of the road on the right of the bridge, which favourable opportunity Turner seized to make what he called a 'memorandum' of the place, composed of a few pencil scratches on a bit of thin paper, that would roll up with others of the sort and go into his pocket afterwards. These pencil scratches he put a few blots of colour upon (I suppose at Bellinzona the same evening, certainly not upon the spot), and showed me this blotted sketch when he came home [England]. I [Ruskin] asked him to make me a drawing of it, which he did.. .The trees Turner cuts away, and gives the rock a height of about a thousand feet, so as to imply more power and danger in the avalanche coining down the couloir. Next, he raises, in a still greater degree, all the mountains beyond, putting three or four ranges instead of one, but uniting them into a single mossy bank at their base.."

"I was curious in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of a place with scarcely a single correct detail. His exaggerations, when it suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful - lifting up, for instance, by two or three stories, the steeple or rather stunted cone of a village church - and when I returned to London, I never failed to roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes indeed in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than by rolling back the war into the enemy's camp.."

"The large early [watercolor]-drawings of Turner were sponged without friction, or were finished piece by piece on white paper; as he advanced he laid the chief masses first in broad tints, never effacing anything, but working the details over these broad tints. While still wet, he brought out the soft lights with the point of a brush, the brighter ones with the end of a stick; often, too, driving the wet colour in a darker line to the edge of the light, in order to represent the outlines of hills. His touches were all clear, firm, unalterable, one over the other: friction he used only now and then, to represent the grit of stone or the fretted pile of moss; the finer lights he often left from the first, even the minutest light, working round and up to them, not taking them out as weaker men would have done."

"Turner visited Plymouth (my native town) while I was staying there in the summer of 1813, or perhaps 1814 (1812 ?), painting portraits. As he wished to see the scenery of the river [[w:River Tamar|Tamar - [river in South-west England],]] I accompanied him, together with Mr. Ambrose Johns from Plymouth.. ..to a cottage near Calstock, the residence of my aunt, Miss Pearce, where we all stayed for a few days. From that point as a centre Turner made various excursions, and the result of one of his rambles was a sketch of the scene which afterwards grew into the celebrated picture of the painting 'Crossing the Brook'. The bridge in that picture is Calstock Bridge; some mining works are indicated in the middle distance. The extreme distance extends to the mouth of the Tamar, the harbour of Hamoaze, the hills of Mount Edgcumbe, and those on the opposite side of Plymouth Sound. The whole scene is extremely faithful."

"We were sailing together in a boat on the St. Germains river, near Ince Castle.. ..Turner, Collier, and myself were the only persons present, except the boatmen. I was remarking what a number of artists the West of England had produced, particularly Devon and Cornwall. I enumerated all I could remember from Reynolds to Prout. When I had done, Turner said, 'You may add me to the list; I am a Devonshire man'. I demanded from what part of the county, and he replied, 'Barnstaple'. I have many times since repeated the incident to others, who would insist that the artist was a Londoner [officially born in [[w:Maiden Lane, Covent Garden|Maiden Lane, in London]."

"Turner was struck with admiration at the bridge above the Wear, [near Endsleigh Cottage which he declared altogether Italian.. .. Before six in the [next] morning he rose, and went down towards the bridge. The air was balmy; the strong light between the hills, the dark umbrage, and the flashing water presented a beautiful early scene. Turner sketched the bridge, but appeared, from changing his position several times, as if he had tried more than one sketch, or could not please himself as to the best point. I saw that bridge and part of the scene afterwards in a painting in his gallery. He had made several additions to the scenery near the bridge from his own imagination. The picture was poetical; and, if I remember rightly, he had introduced into it some of the fictitious characters of the heathen mythology; he had bathed it in the gorgeous glories of the southern sun, clothed it in barbaric pearl and gold.."

"I remember one evening on the [[w:River Tamar|Tamar [river in South-west England];]] the sun had set, and the shadows become very deep. Demaria, looking at a seventy-four [ship] lying under Saltash in Cornwall, said, 'You were right, Mr. Turner; the ports cannot be seen. The ship is one dark mass'. 'I told you so', said Turner: 'now you see it all is one mass of shade'. 'Yes, I see that is the truth, and yet the ports are there'. [Turner:] 'We can take only what we see, no matter what is there. There are people in the ship: we don't see them through the planks'. 'True', replied Demaria. There had been a discussion on the subject before between the two professional men, in which Turner had rightly observed that after sunset, under the hills, the port-holes were undiscernible. We now had ocular proof of it."

"'The woods are fine, and the views of some of the headlands round which the river winds are of exquisite beauty. In one place he was much struck, took a sketch, and when it was done said, 'We shall see nothing finer than this if we stay till Sunday; because we can't'. It was the last visit he paid to the scenery of the Tamar before he quitted the West. It was to the honour of several of the inhabitants of Plymouth that boats, horses, and tables were ready for his use during the time he remained. Everybody felt that in paying him attention they were honouring a most extraordinary genius.."

"We once ran along the coast to Borough, or Bur Island, in Bibury Bay. . ..The sea was boisterous, the morning unpropitious. Our boat was Dutch built, with outriggers and un-decked.. ..when running out from the land the sea rose higher, until off Stokes Point it became stormy. We mounted the ridges bravely. The sea in that part of the Channel rolls in grand furrows from the Atlantic.. ..All this time Turner was silent, watching the tumultuous scene.. .. The little island [Bur Island], and the solitary hut it held, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the dark long Bolt head to seaward, against the rocky shore of which the waves broke with fury, made the artist become absorbed in contemplation, not uttering a syllable.. ..While [later] the shell-fish were preparing, Turner, with a pencil, clambered nearly to the summit of the island, and seemed writing rather than drawing. How he succeeded, owing to the violence of the wind, I do not know. He probably observed something in the sea aspect which he had not before noted."

"His glance commanded in an instant all that was novel in [a] scenery, and a few outlines on paper recorded it unintelligibly to others. He placed these pictorial memoranda upon mill-board, not larger than a sheet of letter-paper, quite a confused mass. How he worked out the details from such sketches seemed to me wonderful. His views around Plymouth, in the engravings from his pictures, were marvelously varied in effect, as well as faithful representations. His first sketches showed little of the after-picture to the unpracticed eye; perhaps he bore much away in memory, and these were only a kind of shorthand, which he deciphered in his studio."

"Turner - never sketched much in oil [like a. o. Constable did]; he always got the colour too brown [if he did].."

"..he [Turner] sat at the table [in Farnley ], tearing up the sea with his eagle-claw of a thumb-nail, and working like a madman; yet the detail is full and delicate, betraying no sign of hurry."

"It [the painting Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps ] is so ambiguous as to be scarcely intelligible in some parts (and those the principal), yet as a whole, it is novel and affecting."

"'One stormy day at Farnley, Turner called to me loudly from the doorway: 'Hawkey - Hawkey! [his friend Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley Hall ] - come here - come here! Look at this thunderstorm! Isn't it grand? - Isn't it wonderful? - Isn't it sublime?' All this time he was making notes of its form and colour on the back of a letter. I proposed some better drawing-block, but he said it did very well. He was absorbed - he was entranced. There was a storm rolling and sweeping and shafting out its lightning over the Yorkshire hills. Presently the storm passed, and he finished. 'There', said he, 'Hawkey; in two years you will see this again, and call it 'Hannibal Crossing the Alps'."

"Highly to the credit of this artist [Turner], he is indebted principally to his own exertions for the abilities which he possesses as a painter, and for the respectable situation he holds in society. He may be considered a striking instance of how much may be gained by industry (if accompanied by temperance), even without the assistance of a master. The way he acquired his professional powers was by borrowing, where he could, a drawing or picture to copy from, or by making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition early in the morning, and finishing it at home. By such practices, and by a patient perseverance, he has overcome all the difficulties of the art; so that the fine taste and colour which his drawings possess are scarcely to be found in any other, and are accompanied with a broad, firm chiaroscuro and a light and elegant touch."

"[Turner has] no systematic process for making Drawings – He avoids any particular mode that He may not fall into manner. By washing and occasionally rubbing out, he at last expresses in some degree the idea in his mind."

"I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one [one of Girtin's yellow drawings]."

"Then you will do away with the only social meetings [at the Art Academy in London ] we have, the only occasion on which we all come together in an easy, unrestrained manner. When we have no varnishing days, we shall not know one another."

"My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there."

"It is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confined; namely that which addresses itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the eye."

"..indistinctness is my forte."

"Dear Hawkesworth, Mother Goose came to a rehearsal before Christmas day, having arrived on Saturday for the knife.. .Many thanks for the brace of pheasants and hares—by the same train—indeed, I think it fortunate, for with all the strife and strike of pokers and stokers for the railroads - their commons every day growing worse - in shareholders and directors squabbling about the winding up the last Bill, to come to some end for those lines known or supposed to be in difficulty.. .I am sorry to say my health is much on the wain. I cannot bear the same fatigue, or have the same bearing against it, I formerly had - but time and tide stop not - but I must stop writing for today.."

"No, Mr. Williams, certainly not; if Mr. Drake [a solicitor of the English Railway Company] has purchased a 'Turner', he ought to know it is a Turner; I was once silly enough to look at a picture that I was told had been painted by me, and I found myself soon after stuck up in a witness-box, giving evidence about it; I then said I'll never be so silly again."