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Portraits

Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. – Oliver Cromwell

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk. – Charles Dickens

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change –only to give stability to one beautiful moment. – George Eliot

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. – Samuel Johnson

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait. – Pablo Picasso

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on. – Anthony Powell

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: theres another dog. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything. – Oscar Wilde