Fine Arts Friday: From The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson

The first moment of any art is the impulse to produce something.

Berthe Morisot Painting by Paul Gobillard

 On the part of the consumer, the enjoyment of beauty is a kind of contemplation, but on the part of the producer, art is action.

 

Suzanne and Another by Carl Larsson

 

There is no opposition between beauty and usefulness, for beauty may serve useful purposes (in a sense it always does), yet beauty is not made for in view of its possible utility--it is desirable for its own sake.

Cactus by Carl Larsson

There is or should be art in every doing and making, and where there is art, there certainly is knowledge, intelligence, and even invention.

 

Lise Sewing by Auguste Renoir

Infinitely precious because of the spirituality it imposes on its matter, and a moving witness to the primary creative fecundity which is God's alone, art and the precarious beauties with which it adorns the world and life still remain more a grace than a necessity.

 

Mrs. N.C. Wyeth by N.C. Wyeth