Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec Quotes

My dear Mama, you are definitely the hen who hatched a famous duck.

The cafes bore me; going downstairs is a nuisance. Painting and sleeping - that's all there is.

I have always been a pencil.

The harmony of the luncheon is achieved by a combination of the two main courses which are the focus of the menu.

I can paint until I'm forty. After that I intend to dry up.

When a figure painter executes a landscape he treats it as if it were a face; Degas' landscapes are unparalleled because they are visionary landscapes.

I had placed my stick on the table, as I do every evening. It had been specially made to suit my height, to enable me to walk without too much difficulty. As I was standing up, a customer called to me: 'Monsieur, don't forget your pencil.' It was very unkind, but most funny.

Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it.

In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.

Monet's work would have been even greater if he had not abandoned figure-painting.

A professional model is like a stuffed owl. These girls are alive.

I do not know if you bridle your pen, but when my pencil moves, it is necesary to let it go, or - crash! ... nothing more.

I have tried to do what is true and not ideal.

Never be tempted by water. The water tap should be sealed at lunchtime. If, for example, a sauce goes wrong, adding water doesn't help at all; one only achieves a taste of dishwater.

Everywhere and always ugliness has its beautiful aspects; it is thrilling to discover them where nobody else has noticed them.

Only the human figure exists; landscape is, and should be, no more than an accessory; the painter exclusively of landscape is nothing but a bore.

I don't belong to any school. I work in my corner. I admire Degas.

The wise woman patterns her life on the theory and practice of modern banking. She never gives her love, but only lends it on the best security and at the highest rate of interest.

[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then.

All confined things die.

I am alone all day, I read a little but it gives me a headache. I draw and I paint, as much as I can, so much so that my hand gets tired and when it begins to get dark I wait to see if Jeanne d'Armagnac [one of the cousins] will come and sit by my bed. She comes sometimes and tries to distract me and play with me, and I listen to her speak without daring to look at her, she is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful.

I am certainly not regenerating French art, but am struggling hard to accomplish something on an unlucky piece of paper which has done me no harm at all, and on which, believe me, I am doing nothing that is good ... I hope things will improve eventually; as it is, I am pretty wretched.

Philandering impedes, as everyone knows, the ability to concentrate.

I paint things as they are. I don't comment.