Paul Cezanne
Pure drawing is an abstraction.Collection: Drawing
Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left.Collection: Thinking
What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature.Collection: Art
Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point.Collection: Perspective
I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.Collection: Ego
Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think.Collection: Art
I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.Collection: Progress
An optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quartertone, the surfaces represented by colour sensations. So that light does not exist for the painter.Collection: Light
Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything.. ..A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together.. ..but no programme, no instruction in painting.. ..drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting - the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting.Collection: Teaching
All my compatriots are asses compared to me.Collection: Ego
The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one's own strength makes one modest.Collection: Acceptance
To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity. Pleasure must be found in the studying.Collection: Men
Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.Collection: Art
I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.Collection: Intensity
I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin.Collection: Sadness
Painting, like any art, comprises a technique, a workmanlike handling of material, but the accuracy of a tone and the fictitious combination of effects depend entirely on the choice made by the artist.Collection: Art
The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.Collection: Book
Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival.Collection: Fall
Painting is founded on the heart controlled by the head.Collection: Heart
You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot.Collection: Ideas
There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art.Collection: Art
When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one!Collection: Fire
One is neither too scrupulous nor too sincere nor too submissive to nature; but one is more or less master of one's model, and, above all, of the means of expression.Collection: Mean
Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes. When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness alsoCollection: Art
One had to immerse oneself in one's surroundings and intensely study nature or one's subject to understand how to recreate it.Collection: Study
May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air.Collection: Art
It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling tooCollection: Inspirational
What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations.Collection: Roots
Nature is the best instructor.Collection: Education
I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it.Collection: Art
I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you.Collection: Truth
Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.Collection: Expression
Time and reflection change the sight little by little 'till we come to understand.Collection: Inspirational
Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.Collection: Rain
If I think, everything is lost.Collection: Inspiration
Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos.Collection: Rain
When I start thinking, all is lost.Collection: Thinking
Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them ... one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us ... an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace ... loose conciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them.Collection: Eye
Pleasure must be found in study.Collection: Study
I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.Collection: Work
The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture...we merge in an iridescent chaos.Collection: Thinking
There is no model, there is only color.Collection: Color
Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience.Collection: Mean
All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.Collection: Art
Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.Collection: Art
Time and reflection... modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.Collection: Reflection
The contour eludes me.Collection: Elude
The sun penetrates me soundlessly like a distant friend that stirs up my laziness, fertilizes it. We bring forth life.Collection: Friendship
It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.Collection: Years