Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience..

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color i….

I paint as if I were Rothschild..

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations..

The contour eludes me..

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls belo….

What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature..

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read..

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art..

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link..

If I think, everything is lost..

When I start thinking, all is lost..

Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions..

Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything.. ..A convent, a monastery,….

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience..

Pure drawing is an abstraction..

I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by s….

The strong experience of nature... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work..

I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed... I'd like to put reason in the grass and te….

In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her..

I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs..