79 Pierre-Auguste Renoir Quotes For The Artist In You

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.

Life

  

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

  

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

  

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

  

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

  

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

  

What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.

Me

  

I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.

  

I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it.

Like , Me

  

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

  

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

  

I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.

  

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

Family

  

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.

  

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.

  

I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that.

Life , Me

  

I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.

  

There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.

Life

  

Why should beauty be suspect?

  

Paint with joy - with the same joy that you would make love to a woman.

  

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.

Like

  

-last words about painting, age 78... I think I'm beginning to learn something about it.

Think

  

We are in a period of searchers rather than of creators.

  

You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.

  

The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.

  

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.

Character , Never , Trying

  

It's with my brush that I make love.

  

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

Time

  

White does not exist in nature.

  

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

  

You don't talk about paintings, you look at them.

  

People love to be nice, but you must give them the chance.

  

The more they measure, the more they realize how much the Greeks departed from regular and banal lines in order to produce their effect.

  

I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.

Never , Think

  

About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of 'impressionism,' and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw.

Like

  

I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child.

Like

  

Everybody has their reasons.

  

And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

  

You've got to be a fool to want to stop the march of time.

Time

  

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.

Think , Time

  

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.

Trying

  

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

  

I just keep painting till I feel like pinching. Then I know it's right.

Like

  

Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.

  

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

  

There are two indices of genuine art: it is inimitable and it is ineffable.

  

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.

  

I have a horror of the word 'flesh', which has become so shopworn.Why not 'meat'whilethey're about it? What I like is skin, a young girl's skin that is pink and shows that she has a good circulation.

Like

  

People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.

Like

  

I've never let one day go by without painting, or at least without drawing.

Never

  

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Me

  

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.

  

In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known.

Like

  

Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.

  

Religion is everywhere. It is in the mind, in the heart, in the love you put into what you do.

  

If the professional schools should succeed in producing skilled workers trained in the technique of their craft, nothing could be done with them if they had no ideal.

  

The simplest subjects are the immortal ones.

  

An artist must eat sparingly and give up a normal way of life.

Life

  

It is impossible to repeat in one period what was done in another.The pointof view isnotthesame, anymorethan are the tools, the ideals, the needs, or the painters' techniques.

  

God, the king of artists, was clumsy.

  

Be a good craftsman; it won't stop you from being a genius.

  

I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them.

Never

  

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden... The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

Like

  

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

  

My concern has always been to paint nudes as if they were some splendid fruit.

  

Do not think that it is possible to repeat another period.

Think

  

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

Me

  

I have no rules and no methods... no secrets.

  

The modern architect is, generally speaking, art's greatest enemy.

  

What is to be done about these literary people, who will never understand that painting is a craft and that the material side comes first? The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

Never

  

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

  

A painter who has the feel of breasts and buttocks is saved.

  

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.

Never

  

The purpose of painting is to decorate the walls. Therefore it has to be as rich as possible

  

I have been for forty years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.

  

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 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.

Like

  

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.

Yourself

  

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.

  

I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable ... But I don't seem to have a single real friend!

Me