People From Paris

"I am absolutely sickened with and demoralized by this life, I've been leading for so long. When you get to my age, there is nothing more to look forward to. Unhappy we are, unhappy we'll stay. Each day brings its tribulations and each day difficulties arise.. .So I'm giving up the struggle once and for all, abandoning all hope of success.. .I hear my friends are preparing another exhibition this year [the Impressionists, in Paris, 1880] but I'm ruling out the possibility of participating in it, as I just don't have anything worth showing."

"[looking at the dead body of his first wife Camille, 5 Sept 1879], watching her tragic forehead, almost mechanically observing the colors which death was imposing on her rigid face. Blue. Blue, yellows, grey, what do I know?.. .How natural to to want to reproduce the last image of her, who was leaving us for ever.But even before the idea came to me to record her beloved features, something in me automatically responded tot the shocks of colours. I just seem to be compelled in an unconsciousness activity, the one I engage in every day, like an animal turning in its mill."

"My dear Hoschedé, I do not know if in Paris it is the same weather as here, it is probable and so you will be able to understand my discouragement. I am heartbroken, and I absolutely must share with you all my disillusionment; for nearly two months, I have given myself a lot of trouble without result. You do not believe it perhaps, but it is so: I have not lost an hour and would have reproached myself to have taken even a day to come see our exhibition, just out of the fear of losing a single good painting session, an hour of sun. I alone can know my anxieties and the trouble that I give myself to finish canvases that don't even satisfy me and please so few people. In a word, I am absolutely discouraged, not seeing, not hoping in any future.. .I feel all too well the void that is being made around me and the impossibility of facing up to my part of our expenses if we were to continue living together.. .I see everything in black, in pain.. .Please believe all the sorrow that I have in causing you trouble."

"I've got it.. .the Saint Lazare[train-station in Paris, then. I'll show it just as the trains are starting, with smoke from the engines so thick you can hardly see a thing. It's a fascinating sight, a real dream. I'll get them [the station office] to delay the train for Rouen for half an hour. The light will be better then."

"A group of painters assembled in my home, read with pleasure the article you published in 'L'Avenir national'. We are all very pleased to see you defend ideas which are also ours, and we hope that, as you say, 'L'Avenir national' will kindly lend us its support when the Society we are in the process of forming is finally established."

"There are the most amusing things everywhere [in The Netherlands]. Houses of every colour, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French... .I have not had time to visit the museums, I wish to work first of all and I'll treat myself to that later."

"My dear Pissarro, Forgive me for not answering your first letter earlier, but I 'm starting to work full steam ahead and have hardly any time. I received your second letter this morning and I see that you are going to great pains on my behalf and getting nowhere: I'm sorry to be giving you so much trouble; so drop the whole thing, and I'll ask Durand-Ruel if he could see to it for me, he might be able to get rid of these damn frames. I see that you are definitely going to leave that delightful country for good. Where are you going to, Paris or Louveciennes? I hope you'll write and let me know..."

"is particularly remarkable and there is enough here to paint for a life-time."

"[Chopping wood] is harder than you think, and I'll bet that you would not split much wood.. .All the same, I have probably not reached the end of my troubles. Here is winter at hand, a season not very pleasant for the wretched. Then comes the Salon. Alas! I still won't be in it, for I shall have done nothing. I have a dream a picture of the bathing spot at the Grenouillere, for which I've made a few poor sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting."

"I'm very happy, very delighted.. ..for I am surrounded here by all that I love. I spent my time out of doors.. ..and naturally I'm working all the time, and I think this year I'm going to do some serious things. And then in the evening, dear fellow, I come home to my little cottage to find a good fire and a dear little family.. .Dear friend, it's a delight to watch this person [his first son Jean, born in 1867] grow, and I am glad to have him to be sure..."

"In Paris one is too preoccupied by what one sees and what one hears, however strong one is; what I am doing here has, I think, the merit of not resembling anyone, because it is simply the expression of what I myself have experienced."

"One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here will at least have the merit of being unlike anyone else, at least I believe so, because it will simply be the expression of what I, and only I have felt. The further I get, the more I regret how little I know, that's what hinders me the most.. .I don't think I will spend much time in Paris now, a month at the very most, each year."

"There at the moment in .. .Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously. There's lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful.. .I shall tell you I'm sending a flower picture to the exhibition at Rouen; there are very beautiful flowers at present."

"It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written — but then, try to do it! All this proves that one must think of nothing but them [impressions]; it is by dint of observation and reflection that one makes discoveries."

"My dear Frédéric Bazille, I ask myself what you can be doing in Paris during fine weather, for I suppose that it must also be very fine there. Here my dear fellow, it is is charming, and I discover every day always beautiful things. It is enough to become mad [fou], so much do I have the desire to do it all, my head is cracking. Damn it, here it is the sixteenth, put aside your cliques and your claques, and come spend a couple of weeks here, it would be the best thing that you could do, because in Paris it cannot be very easy to work. This very day, I still have a month to stay in ; furthermore my sketches are becoming finished, I have even set to work additionally [remis] on some others. In sum, I am content enough with my stay here, even though my studies are very far from what I would wish. It is decidedly frightfully difficult to make something complete in all respects, and I think that there are scarcely any but those who content themselves with the approximate. Very well, my dear fellow, I want to struggle, scrape, start over again [recommencer], because one can do what one sees and understands, and it seems to me, when I see nature, that I am going to do it all, write it all out, but them go try to do it.. ..when one is on the job.. All this proves that one must only think about this. It is by force of observation and reflection that one finds. So let us grind away and grind away constantly. Are you making any progress? Yes, I am sure of it, but what I am sure of is that you do not work enough and not in the right way. It is not with carefree guys like your Villa and others that you will be able to work. It would be better all alone, and yet, all alone there are plenty of things that one cannot make out. In the end all of this is terrible, and it is a rough task. .. .It is frightening what I see in my head."

"It is beautiful here [in , Normandy], my friend; every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting.. ..I want to fight, scratch it off, start again, because I start to see and understand. I seems to me as if I can see nature and I can catch it all.. ..it is by observation and reflection that I discover how. That is what we are working on, continuously.."

"By way of news, I can tell you that Couture, that bad-tempered fellow, has completely given up painting. It's no great pity; in this exhibition, he had some really bad paintings."

"'..learn to draw: that's where most of you [Troyon's pupils] are falling down today.. ..draw with all your might; you can never learn too much. However, don’t neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them..' [Monet is quoting in his letter Troyon, a friend of Boudin in Paris]"

"Among Troyon's paintings there are two huge ones; Return to the Farm is marvelous with its beautiful stormy sky. There is much windy motion in the clouds, and the cows and dogs are very good. In Going to the Market you see the mist at sunrise. It's superb and, most of all, very luminous. The wide space in View from Surennes is amazing. You feel you are really in the countryside."

"I am surrounded by a small group of young s who will be very happy get to know you. Besides, they are real painters... I find myself very well fixed here. I am drawing figures at hard. And at the Academy, there are only landscapists. They begin to perceive that it's a good thing."

"Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands."

"For my taste, sculpture should have as little movement as possible.. ..Rodin himself remains quiet; he puts movement into his rendering of muscles, but the whole remains quiet and calm."

"My sculpture is altogether different from Rodin’s.. ..In sculpture he [Rodin] always sees the flesh first."

"Art is complex, I said to Rodin, who smiled because he felt that I was struggling with nature.. ..the beauty of Rodin’s art is.. ..in the thoughts he embodied. As for me, I just take a walk on the beach. A young girl appears. From that girl walking there emanates a soul. That is That is at I want to give my statue, that thing alive, yet immaterial. In composing the figure of one young girl I must give the impression that there are all young girls. From the spirit, my feeling passes into my fingers"

"Rodin is himself a cathedral."

"I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age."

"You would not believe my suffering... Death would be sweeter... I can't go another day without seeing you. Atrocious madness, it's the end. I won't be able to work any more. Malevolent goddess! And yet I love you furiously."

"Patience is also a form of action."

"In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt."

"The artist must learn the difference between the appearance of an object and the interpretation of this object through his medium. The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation."

"The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist."

"There are things that other people do not see: unknown depths, the wellsprings of life... There is grace in elegance; above grace, there is modelling; everything is exaggerated; we call it soft but it is most powerfully soft! Words fail me then."

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I do not need."

"The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all that vibrates on the surface: spirit, soul, love, passion — life. ... Sculpture is thus the art of hollows and mounds, not of smoothness, or even polished planes."

"This full, pouting mouth, rich in sensuous expressions. these lips like a lake of pleasure, fringed by the noble, palpitating nostrils."

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."

"Why then should I clothe him to make him look ridiculous in the foolish masculine fashions of his time? There is nothing more banal than these statues of recent notabilities, to be seen in every big city of Europe, masquerading as tailors' models of their ugly period. Man's naked form on the other hand belongs to no particular moment in history ; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages."

"The biblical times have come back again, the great invasions of the Medes and the Persians. Has the world, then, reached the point where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in which it has slumbered?"

"I sacrificed to the mania of the age, which is to overload things. My modeling is there, the eloquence of the gesture also. The rest would only spoil the essential things. It is a stroke of genius. I am going to write to the under-secretary of state that my monument is ready."

"One can never do anything so beautiful as nature."

"Yes, they are beautiful... The shirt, the blouse are garments the folds of which yield simple planes and effects that, rightly rendered, are those of true sculpture. But there is something better still, and that is sackcloth. If I had clothed my 'Burghers of Calais' in sackcloth, they would certainly be more beautiful. I did not dare to. Some one else will do this and will succeed. It is sufficient to express an idea and leave it to its destiny."

"Take more room, examine my 'Gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole — the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. You must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. For that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. The essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work I may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself I shall find the best way of finishing my work."

"I am pervaded by the marvel of this art; but I cannot as yet explain it to myself. The Gothic is the world foreshortened. Where am I to begin? For more than thirty years I have been accumulating and comparing my observations. Perhaps eventually I shall succeed in deducing the rule, the law of divine intelligence; but perhaps I shall not have sufficient time. Then it will be the task of another, younger than myself, who will start his researches earlier, and who, besides, will have been informed by me."

"The young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. The ancients obtained their designs from nature. They found their models in the garden, even in the vegetable garden. They drew their inspiration from its source. The cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle, and the brier are the motives of the Gothic capital. It is not photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art."

"Were this thoroughly understood, industrial art would be entirely revolutionized — industrial art, that barbarous term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit."

"Admiration, is a joy daily kindled afresh... I talk out of the -fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership."

"The streets of Paris, with their shops of old furniture, etchings, and works of art, are a veritable museum, far less tiring than official museums, and from which one imbibes just as much as one can."

"I am not a rhetorician, but a man of action."

"My principles are the laws of experience."

"Michelangelo, revealed me to myself, revealed to me the truth of forms. I went to Florence to find what I possessed in Paris and elsewhere, but it is he who taught me this."