Edgar Degas quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Edgar Degas on Wise Famous Quotes.

An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.

I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.

The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

I have seen some very beautiful things through my anger, and what consoles me a little, is that through my anger I do not stop looking...

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.

If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.

The frame is the reward of the artist.

The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance ...

I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things.

I should like to be famous and unknown.

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

I would rather do nothing than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything. My memories will do better.

I would like to be famous but unknown.

The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.

The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

Everybody has talent at
twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

The true traveler never arrives.

Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.

For those who don't know what they are doing, painting is easy.
For those who do know what they are doing, painting is difficult.

Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.

Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.

We were created to look at one another, weren't we

It's easy to have talent at 20 but what is difficult is to have talent at 50.

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.

People call me the painter of dancers, but I really wish to capture movement itself.

Even in front of nature one must compose.

Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people

One does not marry art. One ravishes it.

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.

Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

The moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art ... these dismal moods have very little compensation.

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

I put it (a still life of a pear, made by Manet, ed.) there (on the wall, next to Ingres' Jupiter, ed.), for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

Drawing is your understanding of form.

Art is really a battle.

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.

Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.

Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

It is people's movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move, how sad would be the tree - and so should we.

There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

I don't admit that a woman draws that well!

Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

I'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, 'That's a pretty little thing,' after I had finished a picture.

What a horrible thing yellow is.

The creation of a painting takes as much trickery and premeditation as the commitment of a crime.

If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it ... painting is one's private life.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

I want to be famous but unknown!

Instantaneity is photography.

A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.