Before you begin, study unceasingly, but once started, make mistake if you must but you must execute freely (12 May 1855). - Eugène Delacroix

It doesn’t do to leave one’s work, that is why time and nature, and indeed everything that labours slowly and ceaselessly, produces such good results, but we, whose work is constantly being interrupted, never spin the same thread from beginning to end. Before I left Paris I was producing the work of M. Delacroix, as he was a fortnight ago, now I am about to being the work of the present M. Delacroix (Wednesday 12 May 1852).

…the outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul…….one works not only to produce art but to give value to time…. — Eugène Delacroix (1798 -1863)

Even when we look at nature, our imagination constructs the picture. (1 September 1859)