Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Quotes

The first things to study are form and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious in art.

Listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling. Be firm, be meek, but follow your own convictions. It is better to be nothing than an echo of other painters.

Be guided by feelings alone. Abandon yourself to your first impression. If you really have been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.

Art is nature as seen through a temperament.

Don't imitate, don't follow the others, or else you will lag behind them.

Never lose the first impression which has moved you.

Set up your study or picture in an orderly fashion. This order should not cramp either the linearist or the colorist ... Never lose sight of that first impression by which you were moved.

Heavens, how charming it is! There is now in the sky only the soft vaporous color of pale citron - the last reflection of the sun which plunges into the dark blue of the night, going from green tones to a pale turquoise of an unheard-of fineness and a fluid delicacy quite indescribable ...

I hope with all my heart there will be painting in heaven.

I am like a child who blows up a bubble of soap. At first the bubble is very small, but it is already spherical. Then the child blows the bubble up very softly, until he is afraid that it will burst.

In preparing a study or a picture, it seems to me very important to begin by an indication of the darkest values ... and to continue in order to the lightest value. From the darkest to the lightest I would establish twenty shades.

Be guided by feeling alone. We are only simple mortals, subject to error.

The most important things in a painting are Form and Value. Color comes last - like a friend you welcome.