Edgar Degas Quotes

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.

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.

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

I would like to be famous but unknown.

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

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

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.

So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.

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

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?

People call me the painter of dancers, but I really wish to capture movement itself.

The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.

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.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

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

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.

Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance ...

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.

A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.

Success! Success! The enemy of progress!

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

Instantaneity is photography.

It is people's movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move, how sad would be the tree - and so should we.

Even in front of nature one must compose.

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.

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

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.'

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations ... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

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

Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.

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

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.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.

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

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

Art is really a battle.

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.

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

The frame is the reward of the artist.

I would rather do nothing than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything. My memories will do better.

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

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

Everybody has talent at
twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.

You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.

For those who don't know what they are doing, painting is easy.
For those who do know what they are doing, painting is difficult.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people

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.

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

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.

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.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

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

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.

C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).

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

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

What a horrible thing yellow is.