Top 105 Rembrandt Quotes & Sayings

Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?

I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.

When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew, Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend. When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.

I was called Rembrandt Hope in my boxing days, because I spent so much time on the canvas.

For every wacky postcard, there's a million people waiting to buy it, and for every $10 million of those things, there's one Rembrandt. Purposely, I think I want to aim at doing something that a lot of people won't like. I'm just worried that it looks like I've compared my work with Rembrandt. "Gervais says he's better than Rembrandt!".

Imagine someone pointing to a place in the iris of a Rembrandt eye and saying, 'The walls of my room should be painted this color.

In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.

From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew.

Many great works of art have only form, the sculpture of the thing. Color as used to signify realization by men like Titian and Rembrandt, gives greater life and tactile experience to the work.

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design.

I would have liked to be - indeed, I should have been - a second Rembrandt.

The whole idea of comparing climbers is ludicrous. It would be like sitting Van Gogh down with Rembrandt and saying, Ready, get set, go.

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.

I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures.

My goal... not to go back to Rembrandt... but to bring the great tradition and whatever is great about it, up to date.

When I was 13 years old, I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Washington, D.C., and they just deposited me at the National Gallery. I would go from Rembrandt to Picasso - I remember that experience so vividly.

My velvet Elvis means the world to me. Although he may not be worth much dough, he means more to me than some old Rembrandt or Van Gogh.

I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

If you spend your life walking through somebody else's museum, you never find out whether you're Rembrandt or not.

Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don't understand me. I am a stranger to them. I'm certain Rembrandt loves me.

I have had three masters, Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt.

The same God who created Rembrandt created you, and you are as precious in God’s sight as Rembrandt or anyone else.

There is a childlike side in the work of the Dadaists, Klee, Miró, Calder and Picasso. I am trying to make things that are very, very serious, and what comes out of it is things that are quite friendly, gay, and sometimes even amusing. [Chaim] Soutine tried to work like Rembrandt, and yet there is nothing of Rembrandt in his pictures.

You can simulate perfection, but it's not the same. Some one can do a copy of Rembrandt, but it's not a Rembrandt. It doesn't have the vibration or the power.

You don't have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I didn't watch 'The A-Team' movie. I'm an artist. You can't re-paint a Rembrandt. You can't duplicate that; I don't care who you get.

Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.

No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.

I am a big fan of the Impressionists, and in my school days, I was inspired by Caravaggio, Velazquez and Rembrandt.

A real Rembrandt hung in a millionaire's home elevator would undoubtedly make for kitsch.

Whenever I see a Frans Hals, I feel the desire to paint; but when I see a Rembrandt, I want to give it up.

...the people at large absolutely gave James Brown respect. He was an original like a Rembrandt or a Picasso

Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown.

You may never see a Rembrandt or the Sistine Chapel, but aren't you glad as a human being they are still there? Probably the only thing that separates us from other creatures is that we aren't limited by our basic needs, like food and water; we have this sense of the whole.

If all of the steps of surrender are present, then a great Rembrandt or Monet will evoke love because the artist is simply there in all his naked humanity.

I love art, painting, and drawing and studying art, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.

If you think about art, if you look at Rembrandt and Vermeer and Caravaggio, if you look at Turner and Constable and all the Impressionists and the Hudson River School, there's a tradition of light in art, especially painting.

... Rembrandt is not a painter at all. He is a creator, who creates his beings, three dimensional living beings, on a two-dimensional flat surface which acts as a mute, and enforces silence on them.

I love the Dutch impressionists - Vermeer, Rembrandt. What they were able to do with light was astonishing. As for photographers, I think mostly of the Hungarians: Robert Capa, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jozsef Pesci. In fact, I have one of his photographs hanging in my house.

I don't think there's an illustrator who's as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt... but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?

I inherited a painting and a violin which turned out to be a Rembrandt and a Stradivarius. Unfortunately, Rembrandt made lousy violins and Stradivarius was a terrible painter.

A friend of mine says his two favorite artists are Picasso and Rembrandt. Picasso because he paints the beautiful in such an ugly fashion. And Rembrandt because he paints the ugly so beautifully.

In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.

Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.

Rembrandt was way ahead of his time. It's as if he was painting an amateur theatrical, or a professional theatrical, in his studio. It's a kind of performance.

For Rembrandt, reality is role-playing.... Everyone is portrayed in relation to a social hierarchy.

Some people are drawn to a van Gogh or a Rembrandt. Some are attracted to exotic guns. Coins. Stamps. I am attracted to cars.

In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again.

In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color

I never want to abandon my roots. I want to give my past and the history of painting the importance it deserves, including the masters like Rembrandt, who built up the surface of the canvas with transparent layers.

Art is not made only one way, art is a point of view? Rembrandt in our days would be Rembrandt again, because the work of the master is his self. But in order to be Rembrandt in ourdayshe would have used new ways that would give a new culture.

Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.

If I owned a Rembrandt and it had some dull colors, I don't think I'd go put reds and yellows in there just to brighten it up. I feel the same way about old golf courses. When you have a masterpiece, I sure wouldn't tinker with it.

Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.