Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Paul Cézanne

63 quotes

“I've ripped it to pieces; your portrait, you know. I tried to work on it this morning, but it went from bad to worse, so I destroyed it..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Cezanne, from his letter to Emile Zola, ca 1861; as quoted in Cezanne, by , Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 23
“Don't you think your Corot [to Guilemet the painter] is a little short on temperament? I'm painting a portrait of Vallabreque; the highlight on the nose is pure vermilion [remark of Cezanne ca. 1860]”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in: Cézanne, by , Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 28
“He (the painter Manet) hits of the tone.. ..but his work lacks unity and temperament too. (ca. 1863)”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in: Cézanne, by , Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 27
“At Aix () I am not free; whenever I want to return to Paris, I always have to put up a fight, and, although your (his father) opposition may not be absolute, I am always deeply affected by the resistance that I encounter from you. I sincerely want my liberty unfettered.. ..it would give me great pleasure to work in the Midi, some aspects of which offer many resources to the painter; there I would be able to attack some of the problems that I wish to solve.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Cezanne's letter to his father in Aix; ca. 1871-73; as quoted in Cézanne, by , Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, pp. 33-34
“Listen, monsieur Vollard, I worked a lot out of doors at . Except for that there was no other event of importance in my life during the years 1870-71. I divided my time between the field and the studio... Zola closed his letter by urging me to come back to Paris too [in 1872 Cézanne went back to Paris].. ..but all the same, something told me to go back to Paris. It was too long since I had seen the Louvre. But understand, Monsieur Vollard, I was working at that time on a landscape which was not going well. So I stayed at Aix a little while longer to study on my canvas.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in: Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 32-33
“But there are motifs that would need three or four months' work, which could be done, as the vegetation doesn't change here. There are the olive trees and the pines that always keep their leaves. The sun is so fierce that objects seem to be silhouetted, not only in black or white, but in blue, red, brown, violet. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the very opposite of 'modeling'. How happy the gentle landscapists of Auvers would be here, and that [con, or 'bastard'?] Guillemet.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Cezanne's letter to Camille Pissarro, from L'Estaque 2 July 1876, taken from Alex Danchev, The Letters of Paul Cézanne, 2013; as quoted in the 'Daily Beast' online, 13 Oct. 2013
“I saw Monet and Renoir at about the end of December; they had been on holiday in Genoa, in Italy.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Cezanne's letter to Emile Zola, 23rd February 1884; as quoted in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 175
“You positively paint like a madman.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in: 'Mercure de France', 16 December 1908, p. 607
“I was very pleased with myself when I discovered that sunlight could not be reproduced; it had to be represented by something else.. ..by colour.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca; Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 79
“You wretch! [Cezanne is portraying the art dealer Vollard who changed his pose during the painter session] You've spoiled the pose. Do I have to tell you again you must sit like an apple? Does an apple move?”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a conversation in Cézanne's studio in Paris, ca. 1896-98; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
“..that distinguished aesthete [ Gustave Moreau,] famous artist and art teacher in Paris, then] who paints nothing than rubbish, it is because his dreams are suggested not by the inspiration of Nature, but by what he has seen in the museums.. .I should like to have that good man under my wing, to point out to him the doctrine of a development of art by contact with Nature. It's so sane, so comforting, the only just conception of art.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 66
“.. (large and famous painting of Dutch 17th century painter Rembrandt.. ..the grandiose - I don't say it in bad part - grows tiresome after a while. There are mountains like that; when you stand before them you shout Nom de Dieu, but for every day a simple little hill does well enough. Listen Monsieur Vollard, if the 'Raft of the Medusa' of Théodore Géricault hung in my bedroom, it would make me sick.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 67
“Everybody's going crazy over the Impressionists; what art needs is a Poussin made over according to nature. There you have it in a nutshell.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 67
“Wouldn't it be wonderful to paint a nude here? [along the river near Aix ] There are innumerable motifs here on the banks of the river; the same spot viewed from a different angle offers a subject of the utmost interest. It is so varied that I think I could keep busy for months without changing my place, simply turning now tot the right and now to the left.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a conversation with Vollard, along the river near Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
“Painting certainly means more to me than everything else in the world. I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven't at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.. .Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a conversation with Vollard, along the river near Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
“Anyone who wants to paint should read Bacon. He defined the artists as homo additus naturae.. .Bacon had the right idea, but listen Monsieur Vollard, speaking of nature, the English philosopher, [Bacon] didn't for-see our open-air school, nor that other calamity which has followed close upon its heels: open-air indoors.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a conversation with Vollard in museum The Luxembourg, Paris 1897 - standing before the 'Olympia' of Manet; as quoted in Cézanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 36
“You can't ask a man to talk sensibly about the art of painting if he simply doesn't know anything about it. But by God, how can he [ Zola, his childhood friend who characterized Cezanne in L'Oeuvre] dare to say that a painter is done because he has painted one bad picture? When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a conversation with Vollard in Cezanne's studio in Aix - after the death of Zola in 1902; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
“I work obstinately, and once in a while I catch a glimpse of the Promised Land. Am I to be like the great leader of the Hebrews, or will I really attain unto it?. .I have a large studio in the country. I can work better there than in the city. I have made some progress. Oh, why so late and so painful? Must art indeed be a priesthood, demanding that the faithful be bound to it body and soul?”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Cézanne's letter to Vollard - Aix, 9 January, 1903; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 103
“Alas! The memories that are swallowed up in the abyss of the years! I'm all alone now and I would never be able to escape from the self-seeking of human kind anyway. Now it's theft, conceit, infatuation, and now it's rapine or seizure of one's production. But Nature is very beautiful. They can't take that away from me. [in the last conversation Vollard had with Cezanne]”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a conversation in Cezanne's studio in Aix, End of 1905; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 112
“You must forgive me for continually coming back to the same thing; but I believe in the logical development of everything we see and feel through the study of nature and turn my attention to technical questions later.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of 1906 from a letter; cited in Paul Cézanne, Letters ed. John Rewald, New York, Da Capro Press, 1995, p. 313
“To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of 1906 from a letter; cited in Paul Cézanne, Letters ed. John Rewald, New York, Da Capro Press, 1995, p. 313
“As a painter I am beginning to see more clearly how to work from Nature.. .But I still can't do justice to the intensity unfolding before my eyes.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Cezanne's letter to his son Paul, a few months before his death; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 268
“I still work with difficulty, but I seem to get along. That is the important thing to me. Sensations form the foundation of my work, and they are imperishable, I think. Moreover, I am getting rid of that devil who, as you know, used to stand behind me and forced me at will to 'imitate'; he's not even dangerous any more. [one week later Cezanne died]”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Cezanne's last letter to his son Paul, Aix, 15 October 1906; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 112
“Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realizing sensations.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole's everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here you are, put this somewhere, on your work table. You must always have this before your eyes.. .It's a new order of painting. Our Renaissance starts here.. .There's a pictorial truth in things. This rose and this white lead us to it by a path hitherto unknown to our sensibility..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything.. .A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together.. ..but no program, no instruction in painting.. ..drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting – the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art has a harmony which parallels that of nature. The people who tell you that the artist is always inferior to nature are idiots! He is parallel to it. Unless, of course, he deliberately intervenes. His whole aim must be silence. He must silence all the voices of prejudice within him, he must forget.. .And then the entire landscape will engrave itself on the sensitive plate of his being.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature as it is seen and nature as it is felt, the nature that is there.. (he pointed towards the green and blue plain; J. G.) and the nature that is here (he tapped his forehead, J. G.) both of which have to fuse in order to endure, to live that life, half human and half divine, which is the life of art or, if you will .. the life of god. The landscape is reflected, humanized, rationalized within me. I objectivize it, project it, fix it on my canvas..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And art puts us, I believe, in a state of grace in which we experience a universal emotion in an, as it were, religious but in the same time perfectly natural way. General harmony, such as we find in colour, is located all around us.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alas, because I'm no longer innocent. We're civilized beings. Whether we like it or not, we have the cares and concerns of classical civilization in our bones. I want to express myself clearly when I paint. In people who feign ignorance there is a kind of barbarism even more detestable than the academic kind: it's no longer possible to be ignorant today. One no longer is. We come into the world armed with facility. Facility is the death of art and we must rid ourselves of it.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 155, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif': Cited in: George Pattison. God and Being: An Enquiry, (2011). p. 64
“..But there is better. Simplicity, being direct. Everything else is just a game, just building castles in the sky.. .Basically I don't think of anything when I paint. I see colours. I strive with joy to convey them on to my canvas just as I see them. They arrange themselves as they choose, any old way. Sometimes that makes a picture. I'm brainless animal. Very content if I could be just that..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Make others feel the same way about it. Without their realizing it! That's the meaning of art.. .Yes, what I'm aiming for is the logical development of what we see and feel when we observe nature; only then I'm concerned with the process, processes being for us no more than simple ways of getting the public to feel what we ourselves are feeling, and of making our point. The great artists we admire have done no more.. .Shall we have lunch?”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..and wanting to force nature to say things, making trees twist and rocks frown, as Gustave Doré does, or even painting it like Leonardo da Vinci, that's literature too. There's logic of colour, damn it all! The painter owes allegiance to that alone. Never to the logic of the brain; if he abandons himself to that logic, he's lost.. .Painting is first and foremost an optical affair. The stuff of our art is there, in what our eyes are thinking.. .If you respect nature, it will always unravel its meaning for you.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Colour, if I may say so, is biological. Colour is alive and colour alone makes things come alive.. .Without losing any part of myself, I need to get back to that instinct, so that these colours in the scattered fields signify an idea to me, just as to them they signify a crop. Confronted by a yellow, they spontaneously feel the harvesting activity required of them, just as I, when faced with the same ripening tint..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's like Impressionism. They all do it at the Salons. Oh, very discreetly! I too was an Impressionist. I don't conceal the fact. Pissarro had an enormous influence on me. But I wanted to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of the museums.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But what an eye Monet has, the most prodigious eye since painting began! I raise my hat to him. As for Courbet, he already had the image in his eye, ready-made. Monet used to visit him, you know, in his early days.. .But a touch of green, believe me, is enough to give us a landscape, just as a flesh tone will translate a face for us..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Monet's cliffs (at Etretat) will survive as a prodigious series, as will a hundred others of his canvases.. .He'll be in the Louvre, for sure, alongside Constable and Turner. Damn it, he's even greater. He painted the iridescence of the earth. He's painted water. Remember those Rouen cathedrals.. .But where everything slips away in these pictures of Monet's, nowadays we must insert a solidity, a framework..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Degas isn't enough of a painter; he doesn't have enough of that! With a little bit of temperament one can manage to be a painter, It's enough to have a sense of art, and that sense is no doubt what the bourgeoisie fear most.. .For a painter, sensation is at the bottom of everything. I will go on repeating it forever. Procedures are not what I advocate.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let's not eliminate nature. Too bad if we fail. You see, in his 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe', Manet ought to have added - I don't know what - a touch of this nobility, whatever it is in this picture that conveys heaven to our every sense. Look at the golden flow of the tall woman, the other one's back.. .They are alive and they are divine.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1510 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 186 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre' [standing in the Louvre in front of the painting 'Le concert Champêtre', painted by Giorgioni (ca. 1510)
“Yes, yes, a formula that's a straitjacket.. ..not for me! All the same, he tries in vain, does Jean-Dominique [Ingres], to wring your heart with his glossy finish! I said this to Vollard, to shock him, he is very powerful! Nevertheless he [ Jean-Dominique Ingres, French classicist painter] is a damned good man.. .The most modern of the moderns. Do you know why I take my hat off to him? Because he forced his fantastic draughtsmanship down the throats of the idiots who now claim to understand it. But here there are only two: Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are scoundrels.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He (Delacroix) turns David [French painter] upside down. His painting is iridescent. Seeing one Constable [famous English landscape painter, admired by French painters, then] is enough to make him understand all the possibilities of landscape, and he too sets up his easel by the sea.. .And he has a sense of human being, of life in movement, of warmth. Everything moves, every glistens. The light!.. .There is more warm light in this interior [probably: Delacroix's 'Woman of Algiers'] of his than in all of Corot's landscapes..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maybe Delacroix stands for Romanticism. He stuffed himself with too much Shakespeare and Dante, thumbed through too much Faust. His palette is still the most beautiful in France, and I tell you no one under the sky had more charm and pathos combined than he, or more vibration of colour. We all paint in his language, as you all write in Hugo's.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's my great ambition. To be sure! Every time I attack a canvas I feel convinced, I believe that something's going to come of it.. .But I immediately remember that I've always failed before. Then I taste blood.. .I never know where I am going or where I want to go with this damned profession. All the theories mess you up inside.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Until the war [between France and Germany] as you know, my life was a mess. I wasted it. It was only at l'Estaque, when (1870-1871) I thought things over, that I really understood Pissarro, a painter like myself.. .He was a determined man. I was overcome by a passion for work. It wasn't that I hadn't been working before, I was always working. But what I always missed, you know, was a comrade like you..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine.. .There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed; Poussin would have shown it in terms of some tomb, underneath the poplars of the Alyscamps.. .I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin.. .You really need to see and feel your subject very clearly, and then If I express myself with distinction and power, there's my Poussin, there's my classicism..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I'am outlining the skin of a lovely peach with soft touches of paint, or a sad old apple, I catch a glimpse in the reflections they exchange of the same mild shadow of renunciation, the same love of the sun, the same recollection of the dew.. .Why do we divide up the world? Does this reflects our egoism?.. .The prism is our first step towards God, our seven beatitudes.”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Objects enter into each other.. .Chardin [French classical still-life painter] was the first to have glimpsed that and rendered the atmosphere of objects.. .Notice how a light transversal plane straddling the bridge of your nose makes the values more evident to the eye.. .Well, he noticed that before we did.. .He neglected nothing. He also perceived that whole encounter in the atmosphere of the tiniest particles, the fine dust of emotion that surrounds objects..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source