Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Washington Allston (American Artist, Writer)

Washington Allston (1779–1843) was an American landscape painter. The first prominent artist of the American Romantic Movement, he produced landscapes, historical scenes, and literary pieces. He was well known for his experimentations with the dramatic subject matter and his fierce use of light and atmospheric color.

Born in Allston Plantation, Brook Green Domain on Waccamaw River, South Carolina, Allston studied at Harvard and the Royal Academy in London before going to Paris and Rome. He developed close friendships with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. He worked for a time in London but returned to America in 1820 and finally settled at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, in 1830.

Allston’s output was small, but it shaped future American landscape painting through its dramatic portrayals of mood. He painted large canvases, such as The Rising of a Thunderstorm at Sea (1804,) and religious scenes, such as Belshazzar’s Feast (1817–43.)

Allston also issued a book of poems, The Sylphs of the Seasons with other Poems (1813,) and a gothic art novel, Monaldi (1842.) His art theory was posthumously published as Lectures on Art and Poems (1850.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Washington Allston

Never judge a work of art by its defects.
Washington Allston
Topics: Art

In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others; for injustice allowed at home is not likely to be correct abroad.
Washington Allston
Topics: Justice

The most intangible, and therefore the worst kind of a lie, is a half-truth.—This is the peculiar device of the “conscientious” detractor.
Washington Allston
Topics: Lying

Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back.
Washington Allston
Topics: Lying

The painter who is content with the praise of the world for what does not satisfy himself, is not an artist, but an artisan; for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a mechanic.
Washington Allston
Topics: Painting

Distinction is the consequence, never the object, of a great mind.
Washington Allston
Topics: Success, Greatness

Reputation is but the synonym of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
Washington Allston
Topics: Reputation

The love of gain never made a painter, but it has marred many.
Washington Allston
Topics: Painting

Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness by elevating itself into an antagonist of what is above it. He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit so much as to look down.
Washington Allston

Never expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
Washington Allston
Topics: Vanity

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
Washington Allston
Topics: Praise

It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king’s evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger, when all above is calm.
Washington Allston
Topics: Lying

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