Edgar Degas Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

Edgar Degas
It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

Edgar Degas
Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

Edgar Degas
One must have a high opinion of a work of art - not the work one is creating at the moment, but of that which one desires to achieve one day. Without this it is not worthwhile working.

Edgar Degas
It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious... he must once more sink himself in solitude.

Edgar Degas
If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

Edgar Degas
Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

Edgar Degas
Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

Edgar Degas
The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.

Edgar Degas
Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

Edgar Degas
I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.

Edgar Degas
Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.

Edgar Degas
Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.

Edgar Degas
A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

Edgar Degas
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

Edgar Degas
Everybody has talent at twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.

Edgar Degas
Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

Edgar Degas
People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

Edgar Degas
Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.

Edgar Degas
Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.

Edgar Degas
It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

Edgar Degas
Some forms of success are indistinguishable from panic.

Edgar Degas
My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them?... I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said.

Edgar Degas
Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

Edgar Degas
I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things.

Edgar Degas
And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.

Edgar Degas
A picture is something which requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime. Paint falsely, and then add the accent of nature.

Edgar Degas
Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

Edgar Degas