Francis Bacon
Philosopher, Statesman
"I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do."
Portraiture quotes
Portraiture
53 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Poet, Playwright, Novelist
"One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows."
Ingmar Bergman
Film Director, Screenwriter
"Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth."
Plotinus
Philosopher
"It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me. Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?"
Pablo Picasso
Painter, Sculptor
"When one starts from a portrait and seeks by successive eliminations to find pure form... one inevitably ends up with an egg."
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Topics related to Portraiture
Browse quotes that often appear alongside portraiture — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Portraiture quotes (page 1 of 3)
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"Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin."
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"A competent portraitist knows how to imply the profile in the full face."
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"If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another."
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"Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come."
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"If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma."
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"Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbours but the portraiture."
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