Paul Cezanne Quotes

I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

Pure drawing is an abstraction.

The sun penetrates me soundlessly like a distant friend that stirs up my laziness, fertilizes it. We bring forth life.

There is no model, there is only color.

What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric by looking and working.

Nature is the best instructor.

The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival.

I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it.

Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions.

There is a logic of colors, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the painter should conform.

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.

I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.

The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.

I am the primitive of the method I have invented.

My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others.

Chatter about art is almost always useless.

Pleasure must be found in study.

I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.

The contour eludes me.

Time and reflection... modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.

You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.

I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else.

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one's own strength makes one modest.

If I think, I am lost.

There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art.

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

One is neither too scrupulous nor too sincere nor too submissive to nature; but one is more or less master of one's model, and, above all, of the means of expression.

To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity. Pleasure must be found in the studying.

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish.

When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one!

See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere.

Two sittings a day of my models and I'm totally exhausted.

My nervous system is very much weakened - nothing but painting in oil can keep me going.

A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter.