Pierre-Auguste Renoir Quotations

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

I consider women who are authors, lawyers and politicians are monsters

In painting, as in the other arts, there's not a single process, no matter how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

One can thus state, without fear of being wrong, that every truly artistic production has been conceived and executed according to the principle of irregularity.

To get someone to pose, you have to be very good friends and above all speak the language.

Progress in painting, there's no such thing! ...One day I went and changed the yellow on my palette. Well, the result was, I floundered for ten years!

To be an artist you must learn the laws of nature.

About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of 'impressionism,' and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw.

I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable ... But I don't seem to have a single real friend!

You've got to be a fool to want to stop the march of time.

Do not think that it is possible to repeat another period.

It is not enough for a painter to be a clever craftsman; he must love to 'caress' his canvas, too.

I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them.

I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.

I'm still afflicted with the malady of research. I don't like what I do, and I paint it out, and paint it out again. I hope this mania will come to an end... I'm like a child at school. The white page must always be evenly written and slap! bang! and there's a blot! I'm still blotting and I'm forty years old.

In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest.

I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child.

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

The purpose of painting is to decorate the walls. Therefore it has to be as rich as possible

I've spent my life making blunders.

I've never let one day go by without painting, or at least without drawing.

A fat lot of good it would do if I told you that Titian's courtesans make you want to caress them. Some day you'll see the Titians for yourself, and if they have no effect on you, then you don't understand the first thing about painting. And I wouldn't be able to help you.

You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.

The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater.

If the painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous.

The modern architect is, generally speaking, art's greatest enemy.

I just keep painting till I feel like pinching. Then I know it's right.

Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.

You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

There are two indices of genuine art: it is inimitable and it is ineffable.

Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.

What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found in the museum of Naples - in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.

It is impossible to repeat in one period what was done in another.The pointof view isnotthesame, anymorethan are the tools, the ideals, the needs, or the painters' techniques.

I have a horror of the word 'flesh', which has become so shopworn.Why not 'meat'whilethey're about it? What I like is skin, a young girl's skin that is pink and shows that she has a good circulation.

How is it that in the so-called barbarian ages art was understood, whereas in our age of progress exactly the opposite is true?

People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.

to express himself well, the artist should be hidden... The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.

They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph.

With a limited palette, the older painters could do just as well as today what they did was sounder.

"The work of art must seize upon you...carry you away."

If it [dabbling in art] didn't amuse me, I beg you to believe that I wouldn't do it.

My concern has always been to paint nudes as if they were some splendid fruit.

The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work.

Everybody has their reasons.

On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii... I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black - you can do anything with that palette.

And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.

There isn't a single person or landscape or subject which doesn't possess some interest, although it may not be immediately apparent. When a painter discovers this hidden treasure, other people are immediately struck by its beauty.

It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.

I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.

Why should beauty be suspect?

The most important element in a picture cannot be defined.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.

With all their damned talk of modern painting, I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colours is black!

I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell. If it doesn't turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it.

I have no rules and no methods... no secrets.

We are in a period of searchers rather than of creators.

Religion is everywhere. It is in the mind, in the heart, in the love you put into what you do.

You don't talk about paintings, you look at them.

What is to be done about these literary people, who will never understand that painting is a craft and that the material side comes first? The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.

I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.

God, the king of artists, was clumsy.

The simplest subjects are the immortal ones.

Be a good craftsman; it won't stop you from being a genius.

An artist must eat sparingly and give up a normal way of life.

White does not exist in nature.

I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that.

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.

If the professional schools should succeed in producing skilled workers trained in the technique of their craft, nothing could be done with them if they had no ideal.

A painter who has the feel of breasts and buttocks is saved.

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.

People love to be nice, but you must give them the chance.

If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.

I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it.

It's with my brush that I make love.

Paint with joy - with the same joy that you would make love to a woman.

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.