Quote: Values, The Most Important Quality

Madison Square

"Personally, I am inclined to hold values to be the most important quality in a picture and this in spite of the fact that the work must depend for its charm upon the other qualities of color, design, and refraction. But a picture that is good in all these respects being weak and unsound in values, will nevertheless be a poor picture. Values might be compared to the skeleton in a human figure, which depends for its beauty upon the exquisite curves of the rounded limbs, the silken sheen of the hair, and the color of eyes and lips and blushing cheeks. Remove the skeleton, and the whole fabric of beauty falls to earth a shapeless mass. Moreover, values are one of the few things in art that can be learned by almost any one who is gifted with ordinary eyesight; and for that particular reason they should engage the earnest attention of every serious student. One who has thoroughly mastered them has gone a long way on the road to success in painting."

Birge Harrison