“A painting is complete when it has the shadows of a god.”

— Rembrandt van Rijn

Statement attributed to Rembrandt in early biographies, as quoted in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2003) by Alison MacQueen
This quote is not to find in the source, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France, 2003,p. 287 https://books.google.nl/books?id=N0dVqAsR5k0C&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=The+Rise+of+the+Cult+of+Rembrandt:+Reinventing+an+Old+Master+in+Nineteenth-century+France&source=bl&ots=SgL2TN2Xct&sig=ZJuOkH35vmifBkzcu5ASLdLyhTI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx17OkrpfVAhWKnBoKHQlxA0oQ6AEIVzAJ#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Cult%20of%20Rembrandt%3A%20Reinventing%20an%20Old%20Master%20in%20Nineteenth-century%20France&f=false/The
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Rembrandt van Rijn 23

Dutch 17th century painter and etcher 1606–1669

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“I have finished a fairly large painting, the goat; I sometimes spoke to you about my plan. I believe it has become a real painting, and very complete.”

Jan Mankes (1889–1920) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb een vrij groot schilderij af, de geit https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mankes_Jonge_witte_geit.jpg; over het plan daartoe sprak ik u wel eens. Het is dunkt me volkomen een schilderij geworden, en heel compleet.

Quote of Jan Mankes (1914) in a letter to A.A.M. Pauwels in The Hague; as cited by J.R. de Groot in 'De bekoring van het gewone - Het werk van Jan Mankes' https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_ons003199001_01/_ons003199001_01_0014.php, p. 104

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mankes_Jonge_witte_geit.jpg
1909 - 1914

“Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.”

Margaret Atwood book The Year of the Flood

Source: The Year of the Flood

“Woman is the crowning excellence of God's creation, the shadow of the gods. Man the god's creation only. Woman is light, man is shadow.”

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894) Bengali writer

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: From Bankim's novel Krishnakanta's Will. Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 114-115

“To assume that one’s existential task is completed when the individual is brought into right relation with society, that is, when the individual has been socialized, is to absolutize society and confuse society with God.”

Merold Westphal (1940)

Source: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992), p. 35

“The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.”

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“The painting is finished when it has erased the idea.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

as quoted in Georges Braque: A Life (2005), p. 191 https://books.google.com/books?id=G2aWVKnJWaYC&pg=PA191
posthumous quotes

“By way of news, I can tell you that Couture, that bad-tempered fellow, has completely given up painting. It's no great pity; in this exhibition, he had some really bad paintings.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Eugène Boudin, February 10, 1860: As cited in: Angelika Taschen (1999) Monet, p. 24
1850 - 1870

“Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As translated in Masnavi I Ma'navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) edited by Edward Henry Whinfield Book IV, Story IV : "Bayazid and his impious sayings when beside himself"

“When less than four years old I was standing with my nurse, Mary Ward, watching the shadows on the wall from branches of an elm behind which the moon had risen. I have never forgot those shadows and am often trying to paint them.”

Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker

The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher (AH Palmer, London, 1892)

“I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.”

Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American artist

As quoted in TIME magazine, Vol. 52 (1948)

“A painting is complete when it has the shadows of a god.”

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Rembrandt van Rijn 23

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