Draftsmen may be made, but colorists are born. - Eugène Delacroix

[There are] two states of barbarism, one caused by ignorance, the other (for which there is far less hope of remedy), by the excess and abuse of knowledge. (13 January 1857)

I see in painters prose writers and poets. Rhyme, measure, and the turning of verses, which is indispensable and which gives them so much vigor, are analogous to the hidden symmetry, to the equilibrium at once wise and inspired, which governs the meeting or separation of lines and spaces, the echoes of color, etc... ..but the beauty of verse does not consist of exactitude in obeying rules.. .It resides in a thousand secret harmonies and conventions which make up the power of poetry and which go straight to the imagination; in just the same way the happy choice of forms and the right understanding of their relationship act on the imagination in the art of painting.

When all is said and done scholars can do no more than find in nature what is already there.