[Before each of numerous portrait sittings:] Now then, with teeth or without?.

He [William Merritt Chase] is, I suspect, getting a very truthful likeness. I would like it better if [it] was not so gray, so cramped about the eyes….

I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am conc….

Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my….

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another.In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm ….

There are portraits and still-lifes And the first, because 'human' Does not excel the second.

A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion..

Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story. I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my desti….

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would ….

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait..

There's a discipline. When you take someone's portrait, you don't have to take 50 photographs, just find that one so that when you release the shutte….

When you are doing portraits, you have that intimacy with someone for a few minutes. For a really good portrait, you don't take the portrait - it's g….

What a business is this of a portrait painter! You bring him a potato and expect he will paint you a peach..

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I'm a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and lan….

Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character..

Pure photography allows us to create portraits which render their subjects with absolute truth, truth both physical and psychological. That is the pr….

All photographs are self-portraits..

In the business of portrait photography, one must combine the artist and the craftsman..

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions..

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is no….

Originally, poetry creates the myth, while the prose-writer draws its portrait..