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Portrait is one of the most eloquent means of expression in every epoch of style. Next to architecture, it gives the most characteristic view of a period and the most severe testimony of a nation's intellectual status. A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result. Richard Avedon When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one? Francesco Clemente If one paints someone's portrait, one should not know him if possible. No knowledge. I do not want to know him at all. I want only to see what is there, the outside. The inner follows by itself. It is mirrored in the visible. Otto Dix “The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.” Marcus Tullius Cicero “We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in.” Pamela Hansford Johnson “The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.” Benjamin Haydon (English historical painter and writer, 1786-1846) “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 “To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation” Alexander Smith “A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.” John Singer Sargent “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” Oscar Wilde “The countenance is the portrait of the mind, the eyes are its informers” Marcus Tullius Cicero “I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.” Salvador Dali “Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.” “Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.” Samuel Butler “The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.” Henri Cartier-Bresson quotes (French Photographer, 1908-2004) “In the business of portrait photography, one must combine the artist and the craftsman.” Louis Fabian Bachrach “In Maine, it began as a historical thing. You have portraits of Longfellow and Chamberlain, then you had the wealthy people who could afford it.” Carl Little 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 (1709-1784) British author. 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 (1881-1973) Spanish painter. 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: there's another dog. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Austro-German poet. 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 “You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall” Jawaharlal Nehru A man walks through life painting a portrait, not of what he would have done, could have done, or should have done, but of what he did”