Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.Collection: Art
To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.Collection: Art
One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.Collection: Courage
I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.Collection: Taken
Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.Collection: Art
One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.Collection: Morning
Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.Collection: Art
There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.Collection: Essentials
Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.Collection: Cost
Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.Collection: Work
The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.Collection: Art
I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it.Collection: Want
When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.Collection: Want
Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.Collection: Photography
There are two indices of genuine art: it is inimitable and it is ineffable.Collection: Art
The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.Collection: Mistake
White does not exist in nature.Collection: White
Everybody has their reasons.Collection: Reason
An artist must eat sparingly and give up a normal way of life.Collection: Giving Up
Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.Collection: Art
I have no rules and no methods... no secrets.Collection: Secret
I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that.Collection: Needs
It's with my brush that I make love.Collection: Making Love
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.Collection: Artist
Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.Collection: Light
The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater.Collection: Artist
I'm still afflicted with the malady of research. I don't like what I do, and I paint it out, and paint it out again. I hope this mania will come to an end... I'm like a child at school. The white page must always be evenly written and slap! bang! and there's a blot! I'm still blotting and I'm forty years old.Collection: Children
My concern has always been to paint nudes as if they were some splendid fruit.Collection: Beauty
Do not think that it is possible to repeat another period.Collection: Thinking
On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii... I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black - you can do anything with that palette.Collection: Mean
They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph.Collection: Believe
I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them.Collection: Painting
In painting, as in the other arts, there's not a single process, no matter how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.Collection: Art
What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples - in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.Collection: Museums
People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.Collection: Gay
If the painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous.Collection: Trying
You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.Collection: Art
A fat lot of good it would do if I told you that Titian's courtesans make you want to caress them. Some day you'll see the Titians for yourself, and if they have no effect on you, then you don't understand the first thing about painting. And I wouldn't be able to help you.Collection: Understanding
To get someone to pose, you have to be very good friends and above all speak the language.Collection: Good Friend
I just keep painting till I feel like pinching. Then I know it's right.Collection: Painting
In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known.Collection: Men
I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.Collection: Dry
You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.Collection: Thinking
The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work.Collection: Artist
A painter who has the feel of breasts and buttocks is saved.Collection: Painter
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.Collection: Character
I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.Collection: 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.Collection: Color
With all their damned talk of modern painting, I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colours is black!Collection: Queens
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.Collection: People