Edgar Degas Quotes - Page 4

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• I'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

  Edgar Degas

  Beautiful, Bottles

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• The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.

  Edgar Degas

  Giving, Advice, Secret

  Richard Thomson, Edgar Degas, Whitworth Art Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum (1987). “The private Degas”

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• 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.

  Edgar Degas

  Inspiration, Drawing, Looks

  Edgar Degas' remark to Walter Sickert (1885), as quoted in "Post-Impressionism and Cubism" by Walter Sickert in "Pall Mall Gazette", March 11, 1914.

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• The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

  Edgar Degas

  Air, Painting, Breathe

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• The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

  Edgar Degas

  Air, Doors, Breathe

  "Degas: An Intimate Portrait" by Ambroise Vollard, translated by Randolph T. Weaver. Dover, (p. 47), 1986.

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• I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.

  Edgar Degas

  Wife, Littles, Might

  "Degas: An Intimate Portrait (Methods of Work)". Book by Ambroise Vollard (1927) translated by Randolph T. Weaver (p. 64), 1986.

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• If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn't want anyone killed. I'd be satisfied with just a little buckshot to begin with.

  Edgar Degas

  Eye, Government, People

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• Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, 'I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.'

  Edgar Degas

  Beautiful, Horse, Art

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• Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Vices, Art Is

  Quoted in Paul Lafond, Degas (1918)

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• I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.

  Edgar Degas

  People, Solitude, Suffering

  Edgar Degas (1963). “Drawings”

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• 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.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Attitude, Brutality

  "Degas: An Intimate Portrait" by Ambroise Vollard, translated by Randolph T. Weaver. Dover, (p. 43), 1986.

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• One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.

  Edgar Degas

  Invention, Tyranny, Recollection

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• Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.

  Edgar Degas

  Boredom, Overcoming, Contemplating

  Edgar Degas' notebook entry (1858), as quoted in "The Notebooks of Edgar Degas" edited by Theodore Reff, 1976.

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• The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.

  Edgar Degas

  Shining, Pimp, Painting

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• It's easy to have talent at 20 but what is difficult is to have talent at 50.

  Edgar Degas

  Talent, Easy, Difficult

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• Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.

  Edgar Degas

  Expression, People, Giving

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Movement, Should

  Edgar Degas (1953). “Pastels”

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• 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.

  Edgar Degas

  Light, Etc, Evening

  Robert Hale Ives Gammell, Edgar Degas (1961). “The shop-talk of Edgar Degas”

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• the moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art... these dismal moods have very little compensation.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Sadness, Littles

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• I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things.

  Edgar Degas

  Stuff, Insurance Companies, Company

  Edgar Degas (1948). “Letters”

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• I don't admit that a woman draws that well!

  Edgar Degas

  Gender, Wells, Draws

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• Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

  Edgar Degas

  Attitude, Expression, People

  Edgar Degas, Daniel Catton Rich (197?). “Edgar-Hilaire-Germain Degas”, ABRAMS

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• These women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... it is as though one were watching through a keyhole.

  Edgar Degas

  Simple, Keyholes, Decent

  "Degas bronze for auction" by Maev Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. April 16, 2002.

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• Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.

  Edgar Degas

  Expression, Giving, Body

  Robert Hale Ives Gammell, Edgar Degas (1961). “The shop-talk of Edgar Degas”

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• A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Two, Imagination

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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