Paul Cezanne
I am the primitive of the method I have invented.
You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.
People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.
The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.
My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.
Right now a moment of time is passing by!... We must become that moment.Collection: Passing By
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle.Collection: Art
Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color.Collection: Light
It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive.Collection: Alive
Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things.Collection: Want
You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.Collection: Eye
To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.Collection: Relationship
All the theories mess you up inside.Collection: Theory
Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down.Collection: Color
Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.Collection: Inspirational
Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder.Collection: Spheres
Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate...Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.Collection: Reality
The painter unfolds that which has not been seen.Collection: Painter
If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.Collection: Art
The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.Collection: Thinking
One must see one's model correctly and experience it in the right way; and furthermore express oneself forcibly and with distinction.Collection: Way
Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine.Collection: Generations
It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling.Collection: Light
To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric by looking and working.Collection: Eye
Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish.Collection: Simple
I should have wished to possess the intellectual equilibrium that characterizes you and permits you to achieve without fail the desired end... Chance has not favoured me with an equal self-assurance, it is the only regret I have about things of this earth.Collection: Confidence
In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her.Collection: Nature
Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole's everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution.Collection: Book
I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front.Collection: Portraiture
The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature.Collection: Nature
See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere.Collection: Spheres
I wish to die painting.Collection: Life
Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist.Collection: Artist
The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest.Collection: Giving
The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations.Collection: Character
The strong experience of nature... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work.Collection: Art
Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles.Collection: Art
My nervous system is very much weakened - nothing but painting in oil can keep me going.Collection: Oil
One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense of art - and this sense is doubtless the horror of the bourgeois.Collection: Art
I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth.Collection: Confused
Chatter about art is almost always useless.Collection: Art
Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.Collection: Heart
Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.Collection: Originality
There is a logic of colors, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the painter should conform.Collection: Art
I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else.Collection: Satisfaction
See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them.Collection: Light
Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas?Collection: School
The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. We must not, however, be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth to study beautiful nature, let us try to free our mids from them, let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments. Time and reflection, moreover, little by little modify our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.Collection: Beautiful
Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest.Collection: Art