The paintings in the Pantassa at Mistra formed the last important monument of the medieval free Greek world

There is a great charm about it all; but it is the art of a civilization that has outlived its political basis, and art of wistful nostalgia for which there was not future. The paintings in the Pantassa at Mistra formed the last important monument of the medieval free Greek world. 

 S. Runciman, Lost capital of Byzantium (1980), 95-6 

Charles came to define his royal authority through the awe and silence induced by painting

Charles came to define his royal authority through the awe and silence induced by painting, rather than the books and public disputation cherished by his father, Charles lacked the scholarly erudition of his father, James I, and the ruthless pragmatism of his son, Charles II. His close attention to detail and tendency towards prevarication made him particularly susceptible to the pleasures of collecting, with its absorption in questions of provenance, attribution, style and judgement.

J. Brotton, The sale of the late King's goods (2006), 10

Most English people didn't 'give a blow about art' and considered it sissy.

In the book Lord Clark, as he became, described his life (1903-1983) as 'one long, harmless confidence trick', a reference to what he called his freak aptitude, apparent from the age of 9 or 10, for responding authoritatively to works of art.

He profited from this, he told me, because most English people didn't 'give a blow about art' and considered it sissy. So when they met someone who could speak with confidence and enthusiasm about paintings and sculpture, they were prepared to listen - 'to save themselves trouble'.

M. Barber, 'Not your typical courtier', Slightly Foxed 77 (2023), 81

You bring in a beautiful picture ... and you can see his eyes light up

It never ceases to amaze me how you can talk and talk and talk to some guy about something you've got in mind, and he isn't very impressed, and then you bring in a beautiful picture of it or, better yet, a scale model with the bridge all in white and the water nice and blue, see, and you can see his eyes light up. 

Jack Madigan, cited in R. Caro, The power broker (1974), 623

I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion

'Supposing there is no life everlasting? Think what it means if death is really the end of all things? They've [the nuns] given it all up for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes.'

Waddington reflected fir a little while.

'I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, an the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.'

W.S. Maugham, The painted veil (1925), 169-70 

One thing that surprises me as I advance in this story is that it has done so little to inspire religious imagery

One thing that surprises me as I advance in this story is that it has done so little to inspire religious imagery. Before getting started I would have sworn that everything in the New Testament had been depicted, again and again, in art. But while that's true of the life of Jesus and those of the saints who followed him - preferably if they suffered some gruesome martyrdom - leaving aside the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus, almost the entire book that I scour page after page, the Acts of the Apostles, strangely escapes representation.

E. Carrere, The Kingdom (2014), tr. J, Lambert, 138

Jack Russell's passion for painting was actually considered the least strange thing about him by his teammates

His [Jack Russell's] passion for painting was actually considered the least strange thing about him by his teammates, who witnessed his compulsive and fastidious behaviour towards his food, his clothes, his gear and much else. He once ate steak and chips every night for a month, and he wore the same batting shirt for eight years. ‘I’m not so bad now,’ Russell says. ‘It was just how I dealt with the pressure – I like repetition. I used to have underpants with dots on – one dot for the first session, two dots for the second session. I’d have them washed and dry to wear the next day.’ It must have been exhausting doing all that laundry on top of your regular job, I say. ‘That’s why rooming with me was a nightmare. In between games I was washing stuff in the bathroom sink, then I’d be hanging it over lightshades to dry it off.’ Although that was only the half of it – Russell would tape up his wet paintings, too. ‘I think Angus Fraser still gets headaches from the paint fumes. In Cape Town Neil Fairbrother was actually sick out of the window.’

E. John, Following on (2016), 105

I wondered how I would have looked at this painting had I been Christian

I wondered how I would have looked at this painting [Duccio's Madonna dei Frncesani] had I been Christian. Perhaps I would have liked it less, or liked it more, or liked it in a way that was beside the point, to do with its religious symbolism, and I would have then thought that was the point, that was why it had sustained my interest, and I might have been moved and delighted in a subtly but profoundly different way

H. Matar, A month in Siena (2019), 80

The English, he said, were so spoilt and awed and besotted with writing that they saw the plastic arts as secondary

I once interviewed a very short-tempered Howard Hodgkin, and he erupted with a paean to the inability of the English to see, or make, good artists. The fault, the insurmountable fault, was apparently Shakespeare's ... him and the Book of Common Prayer ... and the dictionary. It was the English language itself, so voluminous, logorrheic, sinewy, subtle, pugnacious and duplicitous (my words, not his). Only English could describe the gallimaufry and the cornucopia of itself. The English, he said, were so spoilt and awed and besotted with writing that they saw the plastic arts as secondary, a charming craft or self-expression. the best those not blessed by the word could hope for would by to become licensed illustrators of poetic insight. 

A.A. Gill, Pour me (2015), 73

And to paint with passion, you must paint things that passionately interest you

And to paint with passion, you must paint things that passionately interest you, moving things, human things. Nobody, except a mystical pantheist, like Van Gogh, can seriously be as much interested in napkins, apples and bottles as in his lover's face, or the resurrection, or the destiny of man. Could Mantegna have devised his splendid compositions if he had painted arrangements of Chianti flasks and cheeses instead of Crucifixions, martyrs and triumphs of the great men? Nobody but a fool could believe it.

A. Huxley, Antic Hay (1923), 85

Great painting was maximum action and maximum atmospherics on a maximum scale

He sat back on one of the chairs and gazed at this huge helping of art [The Crucifixion, Tintoretto, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. 1565]. It really was a mad painting, great if your idea of great painting was maximum action and maximum atmospherics on a maximum scale, which, at that moment, seemed a pretty good definition of maximum greatness. This was high concept art, all right, and there was no doubting who was the star of the show, the focus of everyone's attention. Everybody in the painting he was looking at was looking at the crucified Christ, even the two thieves who were getting crucified alongside him, even people like the guy on the horse, who was looking at something else.

G. Dyer, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2009), 155-56

It is also one of my favourite paintings.

Third-rate works surround an outstanding work without any recognition of what fundamentally differentiates them

Visitors to art museums are often overwhelmed by the number of works on display, and by what they take to be their cupable inability to concentrate on more than a few if these works. In fact such a reaction is reasonable. Art history has totally failed to  come to terms with the problem of the relationship between the outstanding work and the average work of the European tradition. The notion of genius is not in itself an adequate answer. Consequently the confusion remains on the walls of the galleries. Third-rate works surround an outstanding work without any recognition - let alone explanation - of what fundamentally differentiates them. 

J. Berger, Ways of seeing (1972), 88

I had not then acquired the technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal competently with the works of modern artist

I had not then acquired the technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal competently with the works of modern artist. If this were the place I could write a very neat little guide to enable the amateur of pictures to deal to the satisfaction of their painters with the most diverse manifestations of the creative instinct. There is the intense ‘By God!’ that acknowledges the power of the ruthless realist, the ‘It’s so awfully sincere’ that covers your embarrassment when you are shown the coloured photograph of an alderman’s widow, the low whistle that exhibits your admiration for the post-impressionist, the ‘Terribly amusing’ that expresses what you feel about the cubist, the ‘Oh!’ of one who is overcome, the ‘Ah!’ of him whose breath is taken away.

W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale (1930), 131-132

Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?

'They never go near the Louvre,' I said, 'or, if they do, it's only because one of their absurd reviews has suddenly "discovered" a master who fits in with that month's aesthetic theory. Half of they are out to make  a popular splash like Picabia; the other half quite simply want to earn their living doing advertisements for Vogue and decorating nightclubs. And the teachers still go on trying to make them paint like Delacroix.'
'Charles,' said Cordelia, 'Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?'
'Great bosh.'
'Oh, I'm so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said we shouldn't try and criticize what we didn't understand. Now I shall tell I have had it straight from a real artist and snubs to her.'

E. Waugh, Brideshead revisited (1945), 177