Various Artist quotes.

Henri Matisse (French 1869-1954):

Henri Matisse,
Blue Table Cloth, 1909
oil on canvas, Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.

Creativity takes courage.

Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Exactitude is not truth.

He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

Georges Seurat (French 1859-1891):

Invitation to the Sideshow, oil on canvas, 1887-89,  Metropolitan  Museum of  Art,  NYC

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist.

Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.

Various Artists quotes.

Paul Cezanne (French 1839-1906)

A puny body weakens the soul.

A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

I allow no one to touch me.

I am a pupil of Pissarro.

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.

I am the primitive of the method I have invented.

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.

I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.

I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.

I have sworn to die painting.

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.

I paint as if I were Rothschild.

I want to die painting.

I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others.

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?

It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre.

My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life.

My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.

Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know.

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.

The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it.

There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.

Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted.

We live in a rainbow of chaos.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.

Paul Cezanne, The Bathers, 1900-1905, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London