Thomas Eakins Quotes
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When you first commence painting everything is a muddle. Even the commonest colors seem to have the devil in them.
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A teacher can do very little for a pupil and should only be thankful if he don't hinder him, and the greater the master, mostly the less he can say.
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I once painted a concert singer and on the chestnut frame I carved the opening bars of Mendelssohn's Rest in the Lord. It was ornamental unobtrusive and to musicians I think it emphasized the expression of the face and pose of the figure.
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In mathematics the complicated things are reduced to simple things. So it is in painting.
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The brush is a more powerful and rapid tool than the point or the stump... the main thing that the brush secures is the instant grasp of the grand construction of a figure.
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The big artist .. . keeps a sharp eye on Nature and steals her tools.
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My honors are misunderstanding, pesecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought.
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Of course, it is well to go abroad and see the works of the old masters, but Americans... must strike out for themselves, and only by doing this will we create a great and distinctly American art.
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Strain your brain more than your eye... You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect.
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I taught in the Academy from the opening of the schools until I was turned out, a period much longer than I should have permitted myself to remain there. My honors are misunderstanding, persecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought.
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I have never discovered that the nude could be studied in any way except the way I have adopted. All the muscles must be pointed out. To do this all the drapery must be removed.
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How beautiful an old woman's skin is! All those wrinkles!
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Strain your brain more than your eye.
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Enthusiasm for one's goal lessens the disagreeableness of working toward it.
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When a man paints a naked woman he gives her less than poor Nature did. I can conceive of few circumstances wherein I would have to paint a woman naked, but if I did I would not mutilate her for double the money. She is the most beautiful thing there is except a naked man, but I never saw a study of one exhibited.
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No man, and least of all myself, could ever disentangle the feelings that animated him.