No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Art is really a battle.
There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.
There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.
Instantaneity is photography.
Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.
What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.
So that’s the telephone? They ring, and you run.
Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people’s compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?
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.
I’m glad I haven’t found my style yet. I’d be bored to death.
Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.
I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, ‘That’s a pretty little thing,’ after I had finished a picture.
An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.
The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.
A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.
Make people’s portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.
I have seen some very beautiful things through my anger, and what consoles me a little, is that through my anger I do not stop looking...
Success! Success! The enemy of progress!
The creation of a painting takes as much trickery and premeditation as the commitment of a crime.
I would rather do nothing than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything. My memories will do better.