..that zone of consciousness through which all artists travel mentally, before ever approaching the easel. - Eugène Fromentin

..the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well [characterised by] the total absence of what today we call 'a subject'.

The art of painting is only the art of expressing the invisible by the visible. Whether its roads be great or small, they are sown with problems which it is permitted to sound for one's self as truth, but which it is well to leave in their darkness as mysteries.

What motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture? None. And notice that he never asked for one. A peasant with a drunken red nose looks at you with his heavy eye and laughs with open mouth showing his teeth, raising a jug; if it is well painted, it has its value.