“I began [to portray president Kennedy ] with fragmentary sketches—first in charcoal, then in casein, sometimes just heads, sometimes the whole figure. For the first session (during a Medicare conference), I sat on top of a 6-foot ladder to get an unimpeded view of him. Concentrating on bone structure, most of my first sketches of him made him look twenty years younger. This was also because the positions he assumed were those of a college athlete. I made about thirty sketches at the first session and rushed back to a big studio that had been turned over to me by the Norton Gallery, made further drawing combining different aspects, and finally, after a couple days, decided on the proportions and size of the first canvas—4 by 8 feet. In succeeding sessions of sketching, I was struck by the curious faceted structure of light over his face and hair—a quality of transparent ruddiness. This play of light contributed to the extraordinary variety of expressions.”

n.p.
1950 - 1971, Painting a Portrait of the President', Elaine de Kooning (1964)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I began [to portray president Kennedy ] with fragmentary sketches—first in charcoal, then in casein, sometimes just hea…" by Elaine de Kooning?
Elaine de Kooning photo
Elaine de Kooning 18
American painter 1918–1989

Related quotes

Willem Maris photo

“As far as I can remember, it was before my twelfth year that I was sketching cows in the mornings before and afternoons after school, and because my brothers were 4 and 6 years older than me – naturally I got from them my first teachings in drawing and later in painting.”

Willem Maris (1844–1910) Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School (1844-1910)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Willem Maris: Voor zover ik mij herinneren kan, was ik voor mijn twaalfde jaar 's Morgens voor, en 's middags na schooltijd al in de weilanden aan 't teekenen van koeien en daar mijn broers 4 en 6 jaar ouder waren als ik - genoot ik natuurlijk van hen het eerste onderwijs in het teekenen en later in het schilderen.
Quote of Willem Maris, in his letter in 1901; as cited in 'Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850', Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 36

Jenny Han photo

“The first time I saw him again, it was another year, at my college graduation. And I just knew.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Charlotte Brontë photo

“I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”

Jane (Ch. 17)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Context: Most true is it that "beauty is in the eye of the gazer." My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

Vladimir Nabokov photo

“As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

As quoted at Penn State University Libraries http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/wlolita.htm.
On a Book Entitled Lolita (1956)

John Constable photo

“When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

As quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40
1800s - 1810s

Jozef Israëls photo

“.. but I must have it back [a sketch of mother with child at the breast] very soon, because I become attached to it... Such a sketch is a part of my life; it always stays. I use it ten or twenty times... It is a foundation on which I build.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): ..maar, ik moet ze [een schets van moeder met kind aan de borst] heel gauw terug hebben, want ik hecht eraan.. .Zoo'n schets is een deel van mijn leven; die blijft altijd. Die gebruik ik tien, twintig maal.. .'t Is een basis, waar ik op bouw.
Quoted by N.H. Wolf, in 'Bij onze Nederlandsche kunstenaars. IV. - Jozef Israëls, Grootmeester der Nederlandsche Schilders', in Wereldkroniek, 8 Feb. 1902
Wolf wanted to lent the sketch to have a good photo taken of it for his article about Israëls
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Byron White photo
David Levithan photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Aristotle photo

“Let this serve as an outline of the good; for we must presumably first sketch it roughly, and then later fill in the details.”

Book I, 1098a-b; §7 as translated by W. D. Ross
Nicomachean Ethics
Context: Let this serve as an outline of the good; for we must presumably first sketch it roughly, and then later fill in the details. But it would seem that any one is capable of carrying on and articulating what has once been well outlined, and that time is a good discoverer or partner in such a work; to which facts the advances of the arts are due; for any one can add what is lacking. And we must also remember what has been said before, and not look for precision in all things alike, but in each class of things such precision as accords with the subject-matter, and so much as is appropriate to the inquiry. For a carpenter and a geometer investigate the right angle in different ways; the former does so in so far as the right angle is useful for his work, while the latter inquires what it is or what sort of thing it is; for he is a spectator of the truth. We must act in the same way, then, in all other matters as well, that our main task may not be subordinated to minor questions. Nor must we demand the cause in all matters alike; it is enough in some cases that the fact be well established, as in the case of the first principles; the fact is the primary thing or first principle. Now of first principles we see some by induction, some by perception, some by a certain habituation, and others too in other ways. But each set of principles we must try to investigate in the natural way, and we must take pains to state them definitely, since they have a great influence on what follows. For the beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole, and many of the questions we ask are cleared up by it.

Related topics