Imitation versus expression...

Eugene Delacroix in his Journal, 18 July 1850

"'In painting, and especially in portraiture,' says Mme Cave in her treatise, 'mind speaks to mind, and not knowledge to knowledge.' This observation, which may be more profound than she knows herself, is an indictment of pedantry in execution. I have said to myself over and over again that painting, i.e. the material process which we call painting, is no more than the pretext, the bridge between the mind of the artist and that of the beholder. Cold accuracy is not art. Skillful invention, when it is pleasing or expressive, is art itself. The so-called conscientiousness of the great majority of painters is nothing but perfection in the art of boring. If it were possible, these fellows would labour with equal care over the backs of their pictures. It might be interesting to write a treatise on all the falsities that can be added together to make a truth." *

An extremely thoughtful quote in all, but make sure you read the last line...

Eugene Delacroix in his Journal, 25 January 1850

"It has occurred to me that artists who have a sufficiently rigorous style are most to be excused from exact imitation, Michelangelo, for example. When they reach a certain point, they more than make up in independence and audacity for what they lose in literal truth." *

Eugene Delacroix in his Journal, Wednesday, 13 April 1852

One always has to soil a picture a little in order to finish it. The last touches, which are given to bring the different parts into harmony, take away from the freshness. It has to appear in public shorn of all those happy negligences which an artist delights in." *

While Delacroix  railed against the formalism of David/Ingres, he wasn't willing to get too adventurous, but he laid the foundation for those who followed. Corot, 24 years earlier, noted in his own journal that "...whatever is finished at one sitting is fresher, better drawn, and profits from many lucky accidents, while when one re-touches this initial harmonious glow is lost." *Goldwater

Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, July 1885

"All academic figures are put together in the same way, and, let us admit, 'on ne peut mieux' -- impeccably -- faultlessly. You will have gathered what I am driving at -- they do not lead us to any new discoveries."
"... a Parisian who has learned his drawing at the academy, will always convey the limbs and the structure of the body in the same way -- sometimes charming, accurate in proportion and anatomical detail. But when Israëls, or say, Daumier or Lhermitte, draw a figure, one gets much more of a sense of the shape of the body, and yet -- and that's the very reason I'm pleased to include Daumier - the proportions will sometimes be almost arbitrary, the anatomy and structure often anything but correct in the eyes of the academicians. But it will live. And Delacroix too, in particular."
"... if one were to photograph a digger, he would certainly not be digging then. ... I long most of all to learn how to produce those very inaccuracies, those very aberrations, reworkings, transformations of reality, as may turn it into, well -- a lie if you like -- but truer than the literal truth." *

John Sloan in Gist of Art, 1939

"Many intelligent people have accepted the false idea that accuracy in representing visual facts is a sign of progress in art. Such imitation of superficial effects has nothing to do with art, which is and always has been the making of mental concepts. Even the scientist is interested in effects only as a phenomena from which to deduce order in life." ... "'Looks like' is not the test of a good painting. It indicates merely visual similarity and shows that the artist has not put his brain to work." *

Henri Matisse in Notes of a Painter, published in La Grande Revue, 1908

"Those who work in a preconceived style, deliberately turning their backs on nature, miss the truth. An artist must recognize, when he is reasoning, that his picture is an artifice; but when he is painting, he should feel that he has copied nature. And even when he departs from nature, he must do it with the conviction that it is only to interpret her more fully." *

Matisse on nature...

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