It is very difficult to select 10 famous painters, but here is my selection of 10 quotes from 10 master painters who have marked their time.
Vincent Van Gogh
If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh
Leonardo da Vinci
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.
Leonardo da Vinci
Pablo Picasso
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Pablo Picasso
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
Claude Monet
Impression — I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.
Claude Monet
Edouard Manet
There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.
Edouard Manet
Camille Pissarro
Paint the essential character of things.
Camille Pissarro
Paul Cezanne
Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations
Paul Cezanne
Eugène Boudin
Everything that is painted directly and on the spot always has strength, a power, and a vivacity of touch one cannot recover in the studio… Three strokes of the brush in front of nature are worth more than two days of work at the easel.
Eugène Boudin
J.M.W. Turner
My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.
J.M.W. Turner
