The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as ...an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foreground in a picture is always unattractive ... Art demands that the interest of the canvas should be placed in the far dis...tance, where lies take refuge, those dreams which blossom out of fact and are man's only love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which must yet have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my... eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome a...fter satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills wh...ich rise from the water's edge; for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »