Top 22 Rembrandt Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Rembrandt Quotes from famous people such as Jerry Saltz, Dick Bruna, Simon Schama, Joni Mitchell, Mordicai Gerstein, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwel

You can’t prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell – although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I’d say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn’t really looked at either painter’s work. Taste is a blood sport.
Jerry Saltz
I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.
Dick Bruna
You are not thinking hard enough if you are sleeping well. And you would have to be unhinged to take on a subject like the French Revolution, or Rembrandt, and not feel some trepidation. There is always the possibility that you will crash and burn, and the whole thing will be a horrible, vulgar, self-indulgent mess.
Simon Schama
I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.
Joni Mitchell
I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures.
Mordicai Gerstein
My introduction to art history was like everybody else’s. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don’t see a reflection of myself in any of these things I’m looking at.
Kerry James Marshall
Whenever I see a Frans Hals, I feel the desire to paint; but when I see a Rembrandt, I want to give it up.
Max Liebermann
I didn’t watch ‘The A-Team’ movie. I’m an artist. You can’t re-paint a Rembrandt. You can’t duplicate that; I don’t care who you get.
Mr. T
I don’t think there’s an illustrator who’s as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt… but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?
Quentin Blake
When you grow up looking at Superman, Batman, and all those superheroes, you take it for granted that is what superheroes are supposed to be. So then, when I see art books at the library, and I’m seeing Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and Rembrandt, I think that’s what artists look like.
Kerry James Marshall
When I started in the comic book business, ‘Art Of’ books were strictly the provenance of the greats, like Rembrandt and Da Vinci. But times change, and so do attitudes. Now the comic is considered an art form, and I hope ‘A Life in Words and Pictures’ contributes a little to that art form’s history.
Jim Starlin
You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.
Chick Corea
I had lived with my mother in anger and love – I suppose most daughters do – but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt.
Judith Viorst
In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.
Edvard Munch
I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.
Damien Hirst
I love art, painting, and drawing and studying art, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
Mickie James
A lot of the most prolific painters died broke and weren’t appreciated in their time. I’m trying to remember who exactly I was thinking of – like Rembrandt, van Gogh or Gauguin. Some of those guys, they got whole floors of museums to themselves but weren’t really appreciated in their time at all.
Vic Mensa
From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew.
Anthony Browne
You never know about the art world because it’s a matter of opinion. If you look at old art like Rembrandt and Vermeer, it’s not completely a matter of opinion. The pictures confront you, and you see exactly what it is. In modern art, a lot of it is suggestive, and it becomes a matter of opinion.
Peter Saul
Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don’t think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
Damien Hirst
I would have liked to be – indeed, I should have been – a second Rembrandt.
Victor Hugo
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
Walter Bagehot