Category: Famous Artists stories in few words

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

Read more about 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

Read more about Claude Monet

Edouard Manet

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

Edouard Manet

Read more about 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

Often associated with the Impressionism movement in mid-19th century in Paris, Edgar Degas is in fact difficult to classify in art history because he developed a unique style deeply influenced by the great masters, with subjects such as the body in movement and the lifestyle of the big cities.

His subjects are the full and noisy streets of Paris, horses racing, cabarets and especially brooms. Seen from an original angle his ballerinas which constitutes the subject of nearly 1500 canvas are shown preferably in intimate moments or behind the scenes.

Degas was the painter of movement.

Edouard Manet was the painter who gave a modern touch to painting by the subject and by the impressionist painting technique.

One of the canvas that had a shocking effect on the public at the exhibition in Paris “le Salon” was a nude woman seen having lunch on the grass with dressed men. At that time, he gave a modern touch to the art of painting.

Moreover he continues with a second scandal with the exhibition of his painting “Olympia” always at the “le Salon” which represents a luxury prostitute with his client.

He went on to paint the modern and real life of the cities, for example, cafes, restaurants, cabarets and more. The details of the subject are no longer important, it is the emotion that takes over.
Finally Manet is one of the fathers of the impressionist movement. One of his last paintings « Un bar aux Folies Bergère » resumes well the modern side of the subject painted in an impressionist way.

Claude Monet was a painter who inspired me a lot and who still inspires me today.

He was one of the French painters who started the Impressionist movement by painting in the “plein air”. He painted what he saw, he painted the reflection of light. To be able to paint in plein air the objects and shapes that he saw, it was necessary to develop a quick brushstroke technique that gives the impression of realism while being approximate.

He loved to settle in a place taking with him several paintings in progress and throughout the day, on the morning, at noon and in the evening, he would go from one canvas to another to continue the paintings started the day before at the same hour. He’s the painter of light.

The subject is of secondary importance to me; I want to represent what lives between the object and me. Claude Monet.