19th-century Artist Quotes

The purer the artist's 'mirror' is, the more true reality reflects in it. Overseeing the historical culture of art, we must conclude that the mirror only slowly is purified. Time producing this purifying shows a gradual, more constant and objective image of reality.

I taught in the Academy from the opening of the schools until I was turned out, a period much longer than I should have permitted myself to remain there. My honors are misunderstanding, persecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought.

Cézanne showed us forms living in the reality of light; Picasso gives us a material report of their real life in the mind. He establishes a free, mobile perspective, in such a way that the shrewd mathematician Maurice Princet has deduced an entire geometry.

Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Where I used to strive for movement and restlessness I now attempt to sense and express the complete total calm of objects and the surrounding air.

Lyonel Feininger

Bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from the outside.

In our young days, when Modigliani and I first came to Paris, in 1906, nobody was very clear about ideas. But unconsciously, we knew quite a lot of things, of which we became aware later on.

Nature is richer than I represent it... Nature is so beautiful that when I am not tortured by poverty I am tortured by her splendor. How fortunate we are to be able to see and admire the glories of the sky and earth; if only I could be content just to admire them. But there is always the torment of struggling to reproduce them, the impossibility of creating anything within the narrow limits of painting.

Just as I came out into the rue, an omnibus came by - pas complet, so I sprang in, without that prayer and fasting which should chasten the mind before risking it in a French omnibus.

I don't think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that's all I would have asked for, for I know I'm worth as much as they.

When intuition joins exact research, the progress of understanding will be accelerated astoundingly.

The means of expression is the optical mixture of tones, of tints (of local color and the illuminating color: sun, oil lamp, gas, etc.), that is, of the lights and of their reactions (shadows) following the laws of contrast, of gradation, of irradiation.

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

I do not consider myself a Cubist either because I have come to the conclusion that cubes are not always made for expressing the thought of the brain and of the feeling of the spirit... I capture all these impressions [the visual sensations, Picabia sensed in the modern city] without any hurry to transfer to the canvas. I let them rest in my brain and then, when I'm visited by the spirit of creation, I improvise my paintings just as a musician improvises his music.

Francis Picabia

The greatness of art is not in the display of knowledge, or in material accuracy, but in the distinctness with which it conveys the impressions of a personal vital force, that acts spontaneously, without fear or hesitation.

I would like to make something that is real in itself that does not remind anyone of any other things, and that does not have to be explained like the letter A, for instance.

Good judgement is through good drawing – from the nervous system to the sensory of the brain it is the combination of eurythmics, euphony and poetry, and when the good draughtsman draws, the muses come to dance. Then the imagination is given full play, and design happens. They then become the Muses.

Re Arkansas: Its airs—just breathe them, and they will make you snort like a horse.

Thomas B. Thorpe

I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Art is no longer a purely visual experience.. it is a work of our intellect triggered by nature... the imagination again become the queen of our strengths and we liberate our sensitivity.

One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

It is really too ridiculous for a reasonably intelligent person to expose himself to this kind of administrative caprice.

Frédéric Bazille

Upon first seeing a daguerreotype:

From today painting is dead.

Who is this Monet whose name sounds just like mine and is taking advantage of my notoriety?

Remark recorded by Théodore Duret at the Paris Salon of 1865

The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust.