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A heightened sense of the observation of nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint. I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

Related Quotes

To any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows will be of a bluish cast.

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.

Thus it is with a deaf and dumb person who, when he sees two men in conversation - although he is deprived of hearing - can nevertheless understand, from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, the nature of their discussion.

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Sculpture, a very noble art, is one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade... the painter has to invent a process, [whereas] sculpture is helped by nature.