It is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confin… - J. M. W. Turner

To select, combine and concentrate that which is beautiful in nature and admirable in art is as much the business of the landscape painter in his line as in the other departments of art.

I have appointed you [ his friend, the sculptor Francis Chantry ] one of my executors. Will you promise to see me rolled up in it [in Turner's painting 'Carthage'? ('Yes', responded his friend 'and I promise you also that, as soon as you are buried, I will see you taken up and unrolled.'

I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one [one of Girtin's yellow drawings].