Degas's Quotes: top 88 famous quotes about Degas's

Degas's Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Degas's quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance. — Paul Valery

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

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

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... — Edgar Degas

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. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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

Manet also had an argument with Degas, the end result being that they each returned paintings that they had previous given to each other. — Doris Lanier

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

The frame is the reward of the artist. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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. — Edgar Degas

I should like to be famous and unknown. — Edgar Degas

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

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

I would like to be famous but unknown. — Edgar Degas

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

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

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic. — Edgar Degas

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

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

The true traveler never arrives. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Degas is a master of creating compositions that don't look composed. — Max Liebermann

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

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature. — Edgar Degas

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

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. — Edgar Degas

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

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

One does not marry art. One ravishes it. — Edgar Degas

Art is really a battle. — Edgar Degas

I have hundreds of art books and the biographies of artists I love, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas. — Jamie Wyeth

One has to commit a painting,' said Degas,
'the way one commits a crime. — Elizabeth Bishop

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

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will. — Paul Valery

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. — Edgar Degas

The first sight of Degas' pictures was the turning point of my artistic life. — Mary Cassatt

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

Drawing is your understanding of form. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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. — Edgar Degas

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

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

The human quality Degas most admired was endurance. — John Berger

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

Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes. — Edgar Degas

I don't admit that a woman draws that well! — Edgar Degas

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

What a horrible thing yellow is. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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. — Edgar Degas

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. — Edgar Degas

Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement — Edgar Degas

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

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

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

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

A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs! ... — Paul Gauguin

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

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture. — Edgar Degas

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

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

I don't belong to any school. I work in my corner. I admire Degas. — Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

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. — Edgar Degas

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. — Edgar Degas

I want to be famous but unknown! — Edgar Degas

Instantaneity is photography. — Edgar Degas

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

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

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

Even in front of nature one must compose. — Edgar Degas