The earnest person of honest narrow vision who comes along and says, “I don’t see that colour,” should have one’s sympathy, as looked for with his coldly accurate eye, all the glory of colour disappears and has no existence.
Page 138, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
And the originality that is of so delicate an order that it cannot stand a course of academic training, is so poor a thing that it were better not considered.
Page 63, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
In these Post-Impressionist days we are apt to forget that nature is still one of our best artists …despite the fact that she is often made the excuse for very dull performances, by painters whose chief virtue is honest stupidity.
Page 59, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
Originality that is not the product of sincerity is but peculiarity.
Page 39, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
The work of one who expresses something vital in a poor visual language may be preferable to the work of those who express nothing in particular in a rich one.
Page 59, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
And I think that the sanity of the English mind is destined to play a very important part in the culture of these disturbed times, when so much Continental art is given over to violence.
Page 39, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
The heightened effect that there is in all artistic work, and which is in a way a departure from cold accuracy, must not be made the excuse for careless and slovenly work.
Page 57, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
We are gradually substituting the making of money for the making of good things to buy with it, and are fast heading for the time when machines and “antiques” will be the only good things worth buying.
Page 31, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
On eliminating earth colors:
And there is some considerable danger of that nasty acid fruit salad sort of colouring turning up, as in some of the worst impressionist pictures.
Page 109, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed
Art is like religion in that it is one of those things “no sensible fellow talks about.”
Page 5, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed