Occupation: Artist Birth: February 25, 1841 Death: December 3, 1919
Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits..
I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters..
They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph..
Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art..
I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that..
Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world..
I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts..
"The work of art must seize upon you...carry you away.".
The simplest subjects are the immortal ones..
Be a good craftsman; it won't stop you from being a genius..
My concern has always been to paint nudes as if they were some splendid fruit..
You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composin….
What is to be done about these literary people, who will never understand that painting is a craft and that the material side comes first? The ideas ….
People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters..
In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known..
It's with my brush that I make love..
You don't talk about paintings, you look at them..
When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished..
Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried….
I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them..
An artist must eat sparingly and give up a normal way of life..