Jacques-Louis David Quotes
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If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes.
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The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.
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I will never, for the future, paint the portrait of a tyrant until his head lies before me on the scaffold.
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In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself.
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To give a body and a perfect form to one's thought, this - and only this - is to be an artist.
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To achieve their goal, masterpieces must charm but also penetrate the soul and make a deep impression on the mind that is similar to reality...Therefore the artist must have studied all the motives of mankind and he must know nature thoroughly. In short he must be a philosopher.
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It is the last painting that I want to do, but I want to surpass myself in it. I am putting into it the experience of my 65 years and I do not want to touch a paintbrush again.
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Of all arts, painting indisputably requires the greatest victim.