Pierre-Auguste Renoir Quotes

It is impossible to repeat in one period what was done in another.The pointof view isnotthesame, anymorethan are the tools, the ideals, the needs, or the painters' techniques.

I have a horror of the word 'flesh', which has become so shopworn.Why not 'meat'whilethey're about it? What I like is skin, a young girl's skin that is pink and shows that she has a good circulation.

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.

And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known.

I've never let one day go by without painting, or at least without drawing.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

I just keep painting till I feel like pinching. Then I know it's right.

With a limited palette, the older painters could do just as well as today what they did was sounder.

There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.

The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work.

Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.

I've spent my life making blunders.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

With all their damned talk of modern painting, I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colours is black!

It is not enough for a painter to be a clever craftsman; he must love to 'caress' his canvas, too.

You've got to be a fool to want to stop the march of time.

The most important element in a picture cannot be defined.

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

Everybody has their reasons.

There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.

If the painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous.

I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.