Top 103 Quotes & Sayings by Edgar Degas - Page 2

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

I would like to be famous but unknown.

And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.

A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

Even in front of nature one must compose.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.

I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself.

One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.

Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.

The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn't want anyone killed. I'd be satisfied with just a little buckshot to begin with.

I don't admit that a woman draws that well!

Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.

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.

Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.

A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.

I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.

It's easy to have talent at 20 but what is difficult is to have talent at 50.

The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

the moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art... these dismal moods have very little compensation.

One must have a high opinion of a work of art - not the work one is creating at the moment, but of that which one desires to achieve one day. Without this it is not worthwhile working.

Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.

Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.

I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself.

The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profits... All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

These women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... it is as though one were watching through a keyhole.

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.

What a horrible thing yellow is.

I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.

A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, 'I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.'

Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

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'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.