Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917)
Known as Edgar Degas, was a French painter, printmaker and sculptor.
Visitor: Monsieur Degas, were there any of Monet's pictures at the Durand-Ruel exhibition?
Degas: Why, I met Monet himself there, and I said to him, "Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes!" His pictures were always too draughty for me. If it had been any worse I should have had to turn up my coat collar.
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
? vous il faut la vie naturelle, ? moi la vie factice.
Il faut avoir une haute idée, non pas de ce qu'on fait, mais de ce qu'on pourra faire un jour; sans quoi ce n'est pas la peine de travailler.
Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.
There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it’s charming.
Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.
I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.
I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.
Everybody has talent at twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.
I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament — temperament is the word — I know nothing.
Je voudrais ?tre illustre et inconnu.
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.
A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.
I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself.
A strange fellow, this Degas — sickly, a bundle of nerves, with such weak eyes that he is afraid of going blind, yet for these very reasons extremely sensitive to the character of things. He is more skillful in capturing the essence of modern life than anyone I know.
Even working from nature you have to compose.
Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.
Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.