Quote#Art
Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but…
Quote byJohn Constable · 1776–1837
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78.
English (original)
Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it.
— John Constable
More from John Constable
I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand.. .How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, …
It is so ambiguous as to be scarcely intelligible in some parts (and those the principal), yet as a whole, it is novel and affecting.
There is room enough for a natural 'painture'. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth. In endeavouring to do something better than well, they do what in reality is good for nothing. …
I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass.
When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.
But You know, Landscape is my mistress — 't is to her that I look for fame — and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.