
“No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.”
Meditations. xi. 10.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
XI, 10
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book XI
“No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.”
Meditations. xi. 10.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“All art is but imitation of nature.”
Omnis ars naturae imitatio est.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXV: On the first cause, Line 3.
“Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention.”
Northern Memoirs, written in 1658 and published in 1694 along with another work by Franck, The Contemplative and Practical Angler
as quoted in "The man who got it right," The New York Review of Books, Volume 60, Number 13, August 15, 2013, p. 72
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: p>His superiority was, indeed, real and incontestable; he was the classical ornament of the anti-slavery party; their pride in him was unbounded, and their admiration outspoken.The boy Henry worshipped him, and if he ever regarded any older man as a personal friend, it was Mr. Sumner. The relation of Mr. Sumner in the household was far closer than any relation of blood. None of the uncles approached such intimacy. Sumner was the boy's ideal of greatness; the highest product of nature and art. The only fault of such a model was its superiority which defied imitation. To the twelve-year-old boy, his father, Dr. Palfrey, Mr. Dana, were men, more or less like what he himself might become; but Mr. Sumner was a different order — heroic.</p
translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) ..en dan blijft u over, om de studie, het fragment, tot schilderij te herscheppen. Want vergeet niet, dat dat twee [verschillende] dingen zijn: De natuur is de stof, waaruit wij moeten putten. Maar laat u niet door de moderne (Jeltes: hij bedoelde hier waarschijnlijk de Belgische neo-impressionistische) theoriën wijsmaken, dat het navolgen, het copieeren der natuur 'alles' is. Het doel, het streven van de Kunst is.. ..te ontroeren..
Quote of Roelofs, in a letter to his pupil Frans Smissaert, 8 June 1886; as cited in Willem Roelofs (1822—1922), by Mr. H. F. W. Jeltes, in Maandschrift Elsevierweekblad... http://maandschrift.elsevierweekblad.nl/EGM/1922/01/19220101/EGM-19220101-0268/story.pdf, Jan. 1922, p. 222
1880's
“Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof.”
L'art est une démonstration dont la nature est la preuve.
François le Champi, Introduction (1848); Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif {New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 17