Mastery is an elusive concept. You never know when you achieve it absolutely and it may not help you to feel you've attained it. We can recognize it more readily in others than we can in ourselves. We have to discover our own definition of it.
The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.
It is impossible to tell you the perfect sweetness of the lips and closed eyes, nor the solemnity of the seal of death which is set upon the whole figure. It is, in every way, perfect--truth itself, but truth selected with inconceivable refinement of feeling.
I take back all I ever said about the Old Masters. They give great lessons.
Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way.
I've said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.
I refused [to study under Rodin] because nothing grows under large trees.
Turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy.
Raphael and Titian seem to have looked at Nature for different purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole; but one looked only for the general effect as produced by form, the other as produced by colour.
It is to Titian we must turn our eyes to find excellence with regard to color, and light and shade, in the highest degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art. By a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted.
The first sight of Degas' pictures was the turning point of my artistic life.
If you set out to copy after one master today and after one tomorrow, you will not acquire the style of either one or the other, and you will inevitably become fantastic, because each style will fatigue your mind.
Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause.
In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.
I recommend that you should work actively... and study the artistic structures of Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Watteau, Poussin, and other painters, even Chardin, where he is an artist. Study very closely their dabbing manner of execution and try to copy a small piece of canvas, just one square inch.
To mention only contemporaries, Delacroix, Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Courbet are masters. And finally [I like] all those [painters] who loved and had a strong feeling for nature.
What I am looking for is a masterpiece. I don't want to waste my time. I am tired of experiments.
He who chooses to be a master never does 'just enough' to get by - nor does he cut corners or attempt to cheat the system. He who chooses mastery lives his life asking, 'How can I do more, give more, be more, and thereby accelerate the achievement of my ultimate destiny?
This art of conservation is strength, and makes the masterpiece a masterpiece. Otherwise, the man who simply brought all the different colors obtainable, and squeezed them out upon the canvas to give it 'full force,' would be the greatest master, instead of being merely extravagant.
Choose only one master - Nature.
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.
We cannot all be masters.
If the Masters offered no money at all, I would be here trying just as hard.
Bless... the two painting masters who first pointed out to me that there was coming and going among trees, that there was sunlight in shadows.
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