Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917)
Known as Edgar Degas, was a French painter, printmaker and sculptor.
Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doit jamais ?tre une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.
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.
It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.
The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.
Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.
If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.
Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.