Quote

There is force and vitality in a first sketch from life which the after-work rarely has. You want a picture to seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you by the shoulder! It should impress you like reality!

William Morris Hunt

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William Morris Hunt
Age: 55 †
Born: 1824
Born: March 31
Died: 1879
Died: September 8
Artist
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Lithographer
Painter
Sculptor
Brattleboro
Vermont
W. M. Hunt
William M. Hunt
William Hunt
wm morris hunt
First
Shoulder
Work
Impress
Rarely
Men
Shoulders
Forcibly
Life
Picture
Seized
Like
Force
Sketch
Reality
Seize
Firsts
Vitality

More quotes by William Morris Hunt

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Children should learn to draw as they learn to write, and such a mystery should not be made of it. They should be encouraged, not flattered... then [later in life] double the effort is required to get the facility which might have been gained insensibly.
William Morris Hunt
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Believe that time is going to help you do what you want.
William Morris Hunt
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There's lots of fun in this world, after all. And if there isn't, there is in the next. And we're going there, sure.
William Morris Hunt
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You can't do a fine thing without having seen fine examples.
William Morris Hunt
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The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.
William Morris Hunt
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Strive for simplicity! Don't have the face a checkerboard of tints! Use such colors as nature uses, but not try to keep them distinct! Your work may be called monotonous, but one tone is better than many which do not harmonize.
William Morris Hunt
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Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.
William Morris Hunt
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Let me give you a few simple rules for learning to draw. First, see of what shape the whole thing is. Next, put in the line that marks the movement of the whole. Don't have more than one movement in a figure you can't patch parts together. Simple lines then simple values. Establish the fact of the whole. Is it square, oblong, cube, or what is it?
William Morris Hunt
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Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.
William Morris Hunt
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Inspiration is nothing without work.
William Morris Hunt
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Don't talk of what you are 'going to do!' Do it!
William Morris Hunt
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Elaboration is not beauty, and sand-paper never finished a piece of bad work.
William Morris Hunt
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It's impossible to make a picture without values. Values are the basis. If they are not, tell me what is the basis.
William Morris Hunt
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Imagination comes in after we have experience.
William Morris Hunt
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The artist is an interpreter of Nature. People learn to love Nature through pictures. To the artist, nothing is in vain nothing beneath his notice. If he is great enough, he will exalt every subject which he treats.
William Morris Hunt
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I tell you it's no joke to paint a portrait. I wonder that I am not more timid when I begin. I feel almost certain that I can do it. It seems very simple. I don't think of the time that is sure to come when I almost despair, when the whole thing seems hopeless.
William Morris Hunt
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Art teaches you the philosophy of life, and if you can't learn it from art, you can't learn it at all. It shows you that there is no perfection. There is light, and there is shadow. Everything is in half tint.
William Morris Hunt
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Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be!
William Morris Hunt
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How are we going to make painters by lecturing to them? We are going to make questioners, doubters, and talkers. We are going to make painters by painting ourselves, and by showing the paintings of others. By working frankly from our convictions, we are going to make them work frankly from theirs.
William Morris Hunt
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You are to draw not reality, but the appearance of reality!
William Morris Hunt