Portraits Quotes

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats

History, Alone, Judge

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.
Rita Rudner

Until, Office, Doctor

I collect old portraits. They're all just interesting pictures of people, and you just kind of wonder who they were and what they were. There's a guy - I don't know who he is, but he's wearing a suit. He's got his arms folded, and he looks like he sold insurance or something. I'm just wondering why someone painted him.
Ellen DeGeneres

Someone, Him, Why

Elizabeth Peyton, the artist known for tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant youth, is now painting tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.
Jerry Saltz

Age, Youth, Artist

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
Gertrude Stein

Great, Mouth, Writers

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.
Jawaharlal Nehru

Change, History, Wall

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.
Billy Joel

Music, Great, Art

People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.
Robert Mapplethorpe

Time, Money, Wait

I didn't try and do fashion pictures. I tried to do portraits of girls wearing dresses.
David Bailey

Fashion, Try, Pictures

All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.
Erica Jong

Mother, Living, Worked

I am drawn to intimate, often uncomfortable portraits of a woman persevering and awakening.
Vera Farmiga

Woman, Often, Intimate

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.
Edvard Munch

Good, Person, Himself

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Best, Caricature, Mixture

I feel like vocals are to music what portraits are to painting. They're the humanity. Landscapes are good and fine, but at the end of the day everyone loves the Mona Lisa.
Grimes

Music, Good, End

When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.
Imogen Cunningham

When I was first exposed to the films of Ingmar Bergman, I found them frank and disturbing portraits of the world we live in, but that was not something that displeased me. They were beautiful. I thought people would respond to my plays the way I responded to Bergman's films.
Wallace Shawn

Beautiful, Live, Thought

I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
Lucian Freud

I do portraits. I usually do live models in a class environment, but I've been painting at home more. I really love the human form, and I love faces. I've tried to do landscapes a few times.
Michelle Pfeiffer

Love, Home, Live

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
Richard Avedon

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.
Howard Hodgkin

Good, Few, Artists

If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper.
Lynn Johnston

Love, School, Sex

Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don't know.
Imogen Cunningham

Nice, Greatest, Person

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis.
LeRoy Neiman

Life, Big, Difficult

It's almost embarrassing, but I do have one trick for taking portraits on commission. I carry one of these little bicycle horns in my pocket, and once in a while, when someone is sour-faced or stiff, I blow my horn. It sort of shatters the barriers. It's silly, but it works.
Elliott Erwitt

Someone, Once, While

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.
Fay Godwin

Loved, Reading, Interested

Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.
David Amram

May, Black, Wonderful

That's what I paint, I paint people. They're portraits, but you won't always be pleased with the way you look in my paintings. Which is fine, I guess. Unless you're buying it, and it's of your kid!
Jemima Kirke

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 sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.
Chuck Close

Learning, Place, Another

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 landscapes, more rarely portraits.
Gustav Klimt

Morning, Nothing, Evening

I do house things. I paint. I do portraits. I also paint my house.
Willa Ford

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James Russell Lowell

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