J. M. W. Turner Quotations

If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.

There's a sketch at every turn.

Painting is a strange business.

indistinctness is my forte.

Painting can never show her nose in company with architecture but to have it snubbed.

To select, combine and concentrate that which is beautiful in nature and admirable in art is as much the business of the landscape painter in his line as in the other departments of art.

My job is to paint what I see, not what I know.

Light is therefore color.

I hate married men. They never make any sacrifices to the arts, but are always thinking of their duties to their wives and families or some rubbish of that sort.

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.

I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.

I don't paint so that people will understand me, I paint to show what a particular scene looks like.

It is only when we are no longer fearful that we begin to create.