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Eugène Delacroix

51 quotes

“..The movement and the rustle of the branches [in the forest, while losing his attention for chasing] delights me. The clouds float past and I lift my head to follow their flight, or think about some madrigal, when a slight sound, which has been going on for a little while, rouses me slowly from my dream.; at least I turn my head and see, to my grief, a little white scut just disappearing into the thicket...”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend Achille Peron - 16 September 1819, Paris; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine…
“I am thinking of painting for the coming Salon a picture [probably the large and unfinished painting 'Botzaris' by Delacroix] whose subject I shall take from the recent wars between the Turks and the Greeks. I think that.. .. this would be a way to attract some attention. I should therefore like you to send me some drawings of the country round Naples, a few quick sketches of seascapes or picturesque mountain sites... Why not also send a few of the studies you have in your portfolio? You don’t need them while you are out there, and it would oblige you to make some more of them.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in his letter to Charles Soulier - 15 September 1821, Paris; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2…
“I must try to live austerely, as Plato did.. .I need to live a more solitary life.. .Valuable ideas beyond number miscarry because I have no continuity in my thoughts.. ..The things which we experience for ourselves when we are on our own are stronger by far, and fresher... [his painting 'The Massacre at Chios' was half done when he wrote this note].”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: autobiographical note in Delacroix' Journal, March 1824; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 9
“I have seen here [in London] a play on Faust, the most diabolic thing imaginable. The Mephistopheles is a masterpiece of caricature and intelligence. It is Goethe's 'Faust', but adapted; the principle features are preserved. They have made it into an opera mixed with comedy and with everything that is most sombre. The scene in the church is given with the priest's chanting and the organ in the distance. Impossible to carry an effect further, in the theater.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter (written in London, England) to J. B. Pierret, 18 June 1825; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows.. .King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
“I have started work on a modern subject, a scene on the barricades.. .I may not have fought for my country but at least I shall have painted for her.. [quote is referring to his famous painting 'Liberty Leading the People', 1830]”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in an unpublished letter to Delacroix' brother, 18 October 1830, but mentioned by M. Sérullaz; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publicat…
“The contour should come last, only a very experienced eye can place it rightly.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, 6 June 1824 (p. 45)
“..that famous idea of 'beauty', which is, as everybody says, the goal of the arts. If it is their only goal, what becomes of the men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and all the northern natures generally, who prefer other qualities? Demand purity, In a word beauty.. .In general the men of the north tend less in that direction. The Italian prefers ornament.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote 1847, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 229
“One has to see a painter in his own place to get an idea of his worth. I went back there [to Corot's studio, after the official exhibition] and I appreciate in a new light the paintings that I had seen in the Museum and that had struck me as middling.. .He told me to go a bit ahead of myself, abandoning myself to whatever might come; this is how he works most of the time.. .Corot delves deeply into a subject; ideas come to him and he adds while working; it's the right approach.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from entry of Delacroix's Journal, 14 March, 1847; as cited in Selected writings on Art and Artists, transl. P. E. Charvet – Cambridge University Press, Archive, 1981, p. 150, note 44
“If you make the light dominate too much, the breadth of the planes leads to the absence of half tints, and consequently to discoloration; the opposite abuse is harmful above all in big compositions destined to be seen from a distance, like ceilings, etc. In the latter form of painting, Paul Veronese goes beyond Rubens through the simplicity of his local color and his breadth in handling the light.. .Veronese had greatly to strengthen his local color in order that it should not appear discolored when immunized by the very broad light he threw on it.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 1850; as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 230 – 231
“Perhaps we shall one day find that Rembrandt is a greater painter than Raphael. I write down this blasphemy which will cause the hair of the school-men to stand on end without taking sides.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 1851; as cited in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2004) by Alison McQueen, p. 102
“One should always be desiring or hoping for something. When one can hope for that which one desires, one enjoys the greatest happiness of which our thinking apparatus is capable. To obtain what one has been desiring is the first step to the depths of sadness and even pain, from which one can never emerge. The sea still enchants me; I linger for three or four hours at a time on the jetty or at the edge of the cliffs. Impossible to tear oneself away. If I could lead such a life for a certain time, coupling it with some interesting occupation, I should enjoy excellent health.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from his letter to Madame de Forget, Dieppe, 13 September 1852; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
“The original idea, the sketch, which is so to speak the egg or embryo of the idea, is usually far from being complete; it contains everything, which is simply a mixing together of all parts. Just the thing that makes of this sketch the essential expression of the idea is not the suppression of details, but their complete subordination to the big lines, which are, before all else, to create the impression. The greatest difficulty therefore is that of returning in the picture to that effacing of the details which, however, make up the composition, the web and the woof of the picture.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote in 1854, in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 234 – 235
“He [ Michelangelo ] did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much less to the action of the picture as a whole.. .Therein lies his great merit; he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated limb.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote in 1854, on the Italian Renaissance artist [[w:Michelangelo|Michelangelo, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 235
“After leaving [the International Exposition in Paris, with a lot of new machines], I went to see Courbet's exhibition; he has reduced the admission to ten cents. I stay there alone for nearly an hour and discover that the picture [ 'L'atélier' / the Painter's Studio - 1855] of his which they refused [for exposing on the official Salon in Paris ] is a masterpiece; I simply could not tear myself away from the sight of it.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 3 August, 1855; as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 236
“Constable, an admirable man, is one of England's glories. I have already told you about him and about the impression he had made on me when I was making 'The massacre at Chios'. He and Turner were real reformers. They broke out of the rut of traditional landscape painting. Our School [ French Romanticism ], which today abounds in men of talent in this field, profited greatly by their example. Géricault [first leader of French Romanticism, followed by Delacroix after his early death] came back in a daze from seeing one of the great landscapes Constable sent us.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Delacroix' letter to Théophile Silvestre, Paris, 31 December 1858; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Ar…
“Rubens, when past fifty years of age, used the time he did not give to the business of his mission to the King of Spain in copying the superb Italian originals he found in Madrid.. .Accuracy of the eye, sureness of the hand, the art of carrying the picture on from the indications of the lay-in to the rounding out of the work, and so many other matters which are all of primary importance, demand application at every moment, and the practice of a lifetime.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvellously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 19 January 1847 (p. 55)
“I believe it safe to say that all progress must lead, not to further progress, but finally to the negation of progress, a return to the point of departure.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 23 April 1849 (p. 97)
“Proportion applies to sculpture as to painting; perspective determines the contour; chiaroscuro gives relief through the disposition of lights and shadows in their relationship with the background; color gives the appearance of life.. .The colorists, the men who unite all the phases of painting, have to establish, at once and from the beginning, everything that is proper and essential to their art. They have to mass things in with color, even as the sculptor does with clay, marble or stone; their sketch, like that of the sculptor, must also render proportion, perspective effect, and color.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 15 April 1851, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 230 – 231
“Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 25 February 1852 (p. 152)
“The landscape [in the painting 'The Bathers', 1853, by Courbet is of an extraordinary vigor, but Courbet has done no more than enlarge a study exhibited there, near his large canvas; the conclusion is that the figures [the two bathers in the painting] were put in afterwards and without connection with their surroundings. This brings up the question of harmony between the accessories and the principal object, a thing lacking in the majority of great painters, [15 April 1853]”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Delacroix' Journal, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 231
“Can any man say with certainty that he was happy at a particular moment of time which he remembers as being delightful? Remembering it certainly makes him happy, because he realizes how happy he could have been, but at the actual moment when the alleged happiness was occurring, did he really feel happy? He was like a man owning a piece of ground in which, unknown to himself, a treasure lay buried.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 28 April 1854 (p. 227)
“Perfect beauty implies perfect simplicity, a quality that at first sight does not arouse the emotions which we feel before gigantic works, objects whose very disproportion constitutes an element of beauty.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 7 September 1854 (p. 252)
“They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 21 September 1854 (p. 256)
“Delsarte tells me that Mozart stole outrageously from Galuppi, in the same way, I suppose, that Molière stole from anybody anywhere, if he found something work taking. I said that what was Mozart had not been stolen from Galuppi, or from anyone else for that matter.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 15 March 1855 (p. 270)
“We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 6 April 1856 (p. 312)
“He Titian is the least mannered and consequently the most varied of artists. Mannered talents have but one bias, one usage only. They are more apt to follow the impulse of the hand than to control it. Those that are less mannered must be more varied, for they continually respond to genuine emotion.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 5 January 1857 (p. 326)
“In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 13 January 1857 (p. 334)
“For his contemporaries, Racine was a romantic, but for every age he is classical, that is to say, he is faultless.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 13 January 1857 (p. 337)
“Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 13 January 1857 (p. 338)
“Painting, in the beginning, was a trade like any other. Some men became picture-makers as others became glaziers or carpenters. Painters painted shields, saddles and banners. The primitive painter was more of a craftsman than we are; he learned his trade superlatively well before he thought of letting himself go. The reverse is true today.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 13 January 1857 (p. 339)
“Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 25 January 1857 (p. 345)
“Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 25 January 1857 (p. 346)
“The so-called conscientiousness of the great majority of painters is nothing but perfection laboriously applied to the art of being boring.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 25 January 1857 (p. 346)
“Les artistes qui cherchent la perfection en tout sont ceux qui ne peuvent l'atteindre en aucune partie.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, 14 March 1858, from Journal de Eugène Delacroix, book 3
“They say that truth is naked. I cannot admit this for any but abstract truths; in the arts, all truths are produced by methods which show the hand of the artist.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 12 October 1859 (p. 388)
“Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 16 January 1860 (p. 391)
“Nature is just a dictionary, you hunt in it for words.. ..you find in it the elements which make a phrase or a story; but nobody would regard a dictionary as a composition in the poetic sense of the term. Besides, nature is far from being always interesting from the point of view of the effect of the whole.. .If each detail is perfect in some way, the union of these details seldom gives an effect equivalent to that which arises, in the work of a great artist, from the total composition.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Delacroix, quoted by Paul Signac: in D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo-impressionnisme, Chap. I.; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p.10 + note 15
“For a man who is sensitive to nature, happiness consists in expressing nature. How infinitely happy, then, is the man who reflects nature like a mirror without being aware of it, who does the thing for love of it and not from any pretensions to take first place. This noble unself-consciousness is what we find in all truly great men, in the founders of the arts. I picture the great Poussin, in his retreat, delighting in the study of the human heart.. ..I picture Raphael in the arms of his mistress, turning from La Fornarina to paint his Saint Cecilia.. ..I am only too well aware that I am far not only from their divine spirit, but even from their modest simplicity...”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend J. B. Pierret, 23 October 1818, from the Forest of Boixe; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and transl. Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Mu…
“In the midst of the activities that distract me [shooting partridges in the woods], when I remember a few lines of poetry, when I recall some sublime painting, my spirit is roused to indignation and spurns the vain sustenance of the common herd. And in the same way, when I think of those I love, my soul clings eagerly to the elusive trace of these cherished ideas. Yes, I am sure of it, great friendship is like great genius, and the remembrance of a great and enduring friendship is like that of great works of genius... What a life would be that of two great poets who loved each other as we do! That would be too great for human kind.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter to his friend J. B. Pierret, 18 September 1818, from the Forest of Boixe; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863”, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Mu…
“I am not doing very much as yet. I am put out by this manner of the Salon. They will end by persuading me that I have produced a veritable fiasco. But I am not yet entirely convinced of it. Some say it is a complete downfall; that the 'Death of Sardanaplus' [Delacroix painted this painting in 1827 after the drama, written by Byron] is that of the Romantics, inasmuch as Romantics do exist; others merely say that I am an 'inganno' [a fraud].. ..So I say they are all imbeciles, that the picture has its qualities and its defects, and that while there are some things I could wish to be better, there are not a few others that I think myself fortunate to have created, and which I wish them.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend Charles Soulier, 11 March 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 67-68
“Of late, men seem to have been possessed by an incomprehensible impulse to strip themselves of everything with which nature has endowed them in order to make them superior to the beasts of burden. A philosopher is a gentleman who sits down four times a day to the best meals he can possibly obtain, and who considers that virtue, glory and noble sentiments should be indulged in only when they do not interfere with those four indispensable functions and all the rest of his little personal comforts. At this rate, a mule is a better philosopher by far, because in addition to all this he puts up with blows and hardship without complaint.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, 29 April 1824 (p. 35)
“I see in painters prose writers and poets. Rhyme, measure, and the turning of verses, which is indispensable and which gives them so much vigor, are analogous to the hidden symmetry, to the equilibrium at once wise and inspired, which governs the meeting or separation of lines and spaces, the echoes of color, etc... ..but the beauty of verse does not consist of exactitude in obeying rules.. .It resides in a thousand secret harmonies and conventions which make up the power of poetry and which go straight to the imagination; in just the same way the happy choice of forms and the right understanding of their relationship act on the imagination in the art of painting.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 19 September 1847; as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 229
“Criticism, like so many other things, keeps to what has been said before and does not get out of the rut. This business of the 'Beautiful' some see it in curved lines, some in straight lines, but all persist in seeing it as a matter of line. I am now looking out of my window and I can see the most lovely countryside; lines just do not come into my head: the lark is singing, the river sparkles with a thousand diamonds, the leaves are whispering; where, I should like to know, are the lines that produce delicious impressions like these? They refuse to see proportion or harmony except between two lines: all else they regard as chaos, and the dividers alone are judge.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a letter to Léon Peisse, 15 July 1949; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
“To be like other people is the real condition of happiness. Sea air and diversions are producing this miraculous effect upon me. What you need is just the contrary. You are dying of boredom from what most mortals regard as bliss – having nothing to do. You need the treatment opposite to mine; I am not joking in the very least: one has to be compelled to some task, driven to it: anyone who is not a drunken brute must achieve boredom at all costs unless he can discover the secret of a taste for amusements.. .These reflections.. ..are not likely to comfort you, but they will change your frame of mind for a few minutes. I shall probably be back in Paris on Thursday...”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: a letter to Madame de Forget, Dieppe, 13 September 1852; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
“How do things stand, now, if the subject contains a large element of pathos?.. .Consider such an interesting subject as the scene taking place around the bed of a dying woman, for example; seize and render that ensemble by photography, if that is possible [photography was a very recent invention in Paris ca. 1853, a.o. by the photographer Nadar ]: it will be falsified in a thousand ways. The reason is that, according to the degree of your imagination, the subject will appear to you more or less beautiful, you will be more or less the poet in that scene in which you are an actor; you see only what is interesting, whereas the instrument puts in everything.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 233
“I did not come to know part II of 'Faust' until long after I made my illustrations, and even then only very superficially. It struck me as an ill-digested work, of little interest from the literary standpoint, but among those most calculated to inspire a painter owing to the mixture of characters and styles it contains.. .You asked what gave me the first idea of the Faust lithographs. I remember that about 1821 I saw the designs made by Retch [ [[w:Moritz Retzsch|Retzsch] ]] and found them rather striking; but it was above all the performance of a dramatic opera on Faust that I saw in London in 1825 which stirred me to do something on the subject. The actor.. ..was a perfect Mephistopheles; he was fat, but that in no way diminished his nimbleness and his Satanic character.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Delacroix' letter to Philippe Burty, 1 March 1862; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 76
“The more I think about colour, the more convinced I become that this reflected half-tint is the principle that must predominate, because it is this that gives the true tone, the tone that constitutes the value, the thing that matters in giving life and character to the object. Light, to which the schools teach us to attach equal importance and which they place on the canvas at the same time as the half-tint and shadow, is really only an accident. Without grasping this principle, one cannot understand true colour, I mean the colour that gives the feeling of thickness and depth and of that essential difference that distinguishes one object from another.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 29 April 1854 (p. 228)