.. that distinguished aesthete [Gustave Moreau, famous artist and art teacher in Paris, then] who paints nothing than rubbish, it is because his dreams are suggested not by the inspiration of Nature, but by what he has seen in the museums... I should like to have that good man under my wing, to point out to him the doctrine of a development of art by contact with Nature. It's so sane, so comforting, the only just conception of art.

In: a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896, as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 66