Pierre-Auguste Renoir Quotes - Page 2

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

You don't talk about paintings, you look at them.

I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that.

I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.

I have no rules and no methods... no secrets.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

A painter who has the feel of breasts and buttocks is saved.

If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.

It's with my brush that I make love.

I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.

I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell. If it doesn't turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it.

With all their damned talk of modern painting, I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colours is black!

What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.

There isn't a single person or landscape or subject which doesn't possess some interest, although it may not be immediately apparent. When a painter discovers this hidden treasure, other people are immediately struck by its beauty.

The simplest subjects are the immortal ones.

To be an artist you must learn the laws of nature.

I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.

You've got to be a fool to want to stop the march of time.

Paint with joy - with the same joy that you would make love to a woman.

The most important element in a picture cannot be defined.

Why should beauty be suspect?

People love to be nice, but you must give them the chance.

I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child.

What is to be done about these literary people, who will never understand that painting is a craft and that the material side comes first? The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.