Edgar Degas Quotes About Painting

Quotes about: Painting

• Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

  Edgar Degas

  Beauty, Dance, Art

  "The shop-talk of Edgar Degas".

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

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Experience, Painting

• 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

  Art, People, Vagueness

  "Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas)". Book by Georges Jeanniot, 1933.

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

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Knowledge, Doe

  "Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century". Book edited by Robert Goldwater, 1945.

• 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

  Writing, Artist, Expression

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

  Edgar Degas

  Real, Communication, Half

• 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

  Painting, Easy, Difficult

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

  Edgar Degas

  Fun, Painting, Difficult

• The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Two, Air

• Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, 'I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.'

  Edgar Degas

  Beautiful, Horse, Art

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

  Edgar Degas

  Air, Painting, Breathe

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

  Edgar Degas

  Mean, Ideas, Giving

  "The Royal Academy". Walter Sickert, English Review, June 1912.

• 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

  People, Solitude, Suffering

  Edgar Degas (1963). “Drawings”

• People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

  Edgar Degas

  Girl, Lying, Clothes

  Edgar Degas, Russell Ash (1992). “Degas' Ballet Dancers”, Universe Pub

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

  Edgar Degas

  Shining, Pimp, Painting

• A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Two, Imagination

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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