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Good_Burning_Plastic comments on On Empirical Truth and Affective Truth - Less Wrong
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No. "This painting is round" is a statement about the properties of the painting itself, independent of any observer. "This painting is beautiful" is a statement about the reaction of the speaker's brain upon seeing the painting. The syntactical similarity between those different kinds of statements in English (and all other natural languages that I know of) is unfortunate to say the least.
Well, not only the speaker, otherwise it'd be completely equivalent to "I like this painting" which it isn't. It is a claim about ambijective features of the painting -- more or less "this painting has certain features such that brains (at least those raised in cultural contexts similar to us) typically produce pleasant reactions".
As I understand it, "This painting is beautiful" is completely equivalent to "I like (the visual aspects of) this painting".
Definitional arguments are not useful. Even using your interpretation, the point stands: the statement, properly understood, is empirical truth.