Painters From France

"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."

"Transport these Mornings on the Seine, Wheatstacks, and Cathedrals around the world and no matter where these paintings will be, the spectator will admire and envy a country where the hand of man built such monuments in the middle of such beautiful sites. Glory thus to the artist, who with the aid of a few lines and some dashes of color can so grandly synthesize the land where he lives."

"At Argenteuil [where Monet had built a little wooden cabin on his studio-boat], Renoir] and Monet resumed their old habit of painting the same views, seated side by side. Life was beginning to change for the better; 1872 seemed to be a year not only for recovery [from the war years] but also for putting down roots."

"I saw yesterday; he sends you [Pissarro's son Lucien] his best. He mentioned that Monet was going to have a one-man show at Durand-Ruel's, and exhibit nothing but Sheaves. The clerk at Boussod & Valadon told me that the collectors want only Sheaves. I don't understand how Monet can submit to this demand that he repeat himself — such is the terrible consequence of success! It happens all the time!"

"This is a bad moment for me, Durand doesn't take my paintings. Miss Cassatt was much surprised to hear that he no longer buys my work, it seems that he sells a great deal. - But for the moment people want nothing but 'Monet's', apparently he can't paint enough pictures to meet the demand. Worst of all they all want 'Sheaves in the Setting Sun'! always the same story, everything he does goes to America at prices of four, five and six thousand francs. All this comes, as Durand remarked to me, from not shocking the collectors!"

"He [ Bracquemond ] also noted the crude execution in some of the Monet's [paintings at the Paris Impressionism-exhibition at M. Petit, May 1887], particularly in one of the Holland canvases [Monet painted them in May 1876], in which the impasto is so thick that an unnatural light is added to the canvas, you can hardly conceive how objectionable it is to me, - even worse is the swept and meager sky - no, I [ Camille Pissarro ] cannot accept this approach to art. - But the walls in the picture seem to me very well treated."

"..tell me whether she [Pissarro's wife] did not find Monet's things a little too dark? [Monet's paintings at the Paris exhibition, at M. Petit, May 1887]. I do not know whether I am correct in this, but these works seem to me to lack luminosity, by which I mean the light that bathes bodies in the shade as well as those in the sun. The effect is certainly decorative, but there is little finesse and crudities are prominent; I do not know if it belongs to our vision which aspires to harmony and demands an art which while not decoration is yet decorative."

"I say this: Monet plays his salesman's game, and it serves him; but it is not in my character to do likewise, nor is it to my interest, and it would be in contradiction above all to my conception of art. I am not a romantic! I would really have no raison d'etre, if I did not pursue a considered technique which yet leaves me free to express myself, and does not inhibit an artist who has the gift."

"Monet has been to Durand [their art-dealer in Paris] and brought the paintings he did this year [1886]; he has one in bright sunlight, it is an incomprehensible fantasy; M. Caseburne himself admitted to me that it is absolutely incoherent, blobs of white mixed with Veronese greens and yellows, and the drawing is completely lost. The other canvases are more carefully done, better, but dark grey. My 'Eragny' has more calm, and you can see in this painting the advantage of unmixed colors and clear and solid draftsmanship. I assure you I would not be afraid to show my work with Monet's. Durand says that Monet pities me because of the course I have taken [following [[w:Pointillism|Pointillism].]] So!.. .Perhaps he does, now.. ..but wait. M. Robertson [good client of Durand in the gallery] being insensitive to Monet's qualities, Durand asked me to explain to him, in English, the good points of Monet's work. I did my best, loyally and without hesitation, for despite his mistakes I know how gifted is this artist [Monet]; but M. Robertson can't stand his work: 'And who painted this horror?'"

"I received a letter from Monet, who is in despair because he has not succeeded with the canvases on which he worked most furiously, as happened with those I did at Gisors. - My work is going better, but I am only beginning."

"Monet is also a great romantic; I love the romance in his work."

"..[enabled] to touch the core, the essence of things. Even in as simple a subject, a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision and an intensity of feeling to which we [the viewer] immediately respond. [quote, c. 1937, referring to a still life by Cezanne and a river-sight with sandbank by Claude Monet he then saw at an exhibition]"

"My dear Duret, I went to see Monet yesterday. I found him heart-broken and completely on the rocks. He asked me to find him someone who would take from ten to twenty of his paintings at their choice, for 111 fr. apiece. Shall we do it between us, making 500 fr. each? Naturally, no one, least of all he, must know that it is we who are doing it..."

"I thought that the painter had no right to paint so un-clearly.. ..(but) the first faint doubt as to the importance of an 'object' as the necessary element in painting.. [ Kandinsky is remembering here his early experience when he saw one of the 'Haystack' paintings of Monet for the first time in his life, in Moscow, c. 1895]."

"The Bridge at Argenteuil... is one of the best examples of early mature Impressionism, in which the brushwork varies according to the image being created: blended mixtures for clear water, choppy aggregates for reflections, wide, dragged horizontals for boat hulls, streaky verticals for masts, finely bunched diagonals and swirls for foliage, curved and irregular dabs for clouds. These different marks are also of varied thickness. The smoother ones for sky and water are so thin as to have negligible substance, but the boats, trees, clouds, and multicolored reflections have substantial impasto. In front of the original painting... the viewer unconsciously lets the thicker strokes confer a fictitious "reality" on their images, compared to the insubstantiality of water and sky. Before Impressionism, painters had varied the direction and texture of their brushwork according to the images they defined, but for Monet these manipulations... were even more vital, because he had renounced the traditional underpinnings of modeling in light and dark. ...[T]he representation of leisure was the result of hard work."

"There's no doubt but that without this liberté, égalité and fraternité there could not have been a Monet, Modigliani, Picasso, or Giacometti."

"I said to him [to Monet, when Degas saw in 1866 for the first time Monet's landscape paintings]: 'I am off, all these 'reflets d'eaux' are making my eyes hurt'.. ..It was full of draughts; a few more and I'd have pulled the collar of my jacket up."

"Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven’t at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.. .Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle."

"Monet's cliffs (in Etretat) will survive as a prodigious series, as will a hundred others of his canvases.. ..He'll be in the Louvre, for sure, alongside Constable and Turner. Damn it, he's even greater. He painted the iridescence of the earth. He's painted water. Remember those Rouen cathedrals (series of paintings of Monet of the Cathedral of Rouen).. .But where everything slips away in these pictures of Monet's, nowadays we must insert a solidity, a framework.."

"But what an eye Monet has, the most prodigious eye since painting began! I raise my hat to him. As for Courbet, he already had the image in his eye, ready-made. Monet used to visit him [Courbet], you know, in his early days.. ..But a touch of green, believe me, is enough to give us a landscape, just as a flesh tone will translate a face for us.."

"If I did not know how unhappy you are, I certainly would not take the trouble to respond to the letter that reached me this morning. You try to demonstrate to me that I don’t keep my promises, but you have only succeeded in proving to me your ingratitude. As far as I know I had never had the air to give you charity. I know to the contrary, better than everyone, the value of the painting that I have purchased [ Monet's painting 'Woman in the garden' - purchased by Bazille] and I very much regret not being wealthy enough to offer you better conditions (WPJ 15)"

"[about his friend Monet, in 1865] ..hard at work for some time now. His paintings has really progressed, I'm sure it will attract a lot of attention. He has sold thousands of franc's worth of paintings in the last few days, and has one or two other small commissions. He's definitely on his way."

"a remark of Monet, quoted by Ambroise Vollard, as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World’s greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 44"

"I'm half an hour late, I'll come back tomorrow."

"One day Eugène Boudin said to me, '..appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky'. I took his advice and together we went on long outings during which I painted constantly from nature. This was how I came to understand nature and learned to love it passionately."

"I felt the need, in order to widen my field of observation and to refresh my vision in front of new sights, to take myself away for a while from the area where I was living, and to make some trips lasting several weeks in , and elsewhere.."

"I didn't become one.. .As long as I can remember I've always been one."

"You were asking my opinion on your work of art, my dear Jean [= Duchamp's brother-in-law Jean Crotti, who asked Duchamp his comment on an art-work he made].. .Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruin others.. .I do not believe in painting per se – A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it and grant it their favors. In other words, no painters knows himself or what he is doing – There is no outward sign explaining why a Fra Angelico and a Leonardo [da Vinci] are equally 'recognized'. It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck."

"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."

"Another important point which you so very accurately sensed concerns the idea that the glass in actual fact is not meant to be looked at (with 'aesthetic' eyes). It should be accompanied by a 'literary' text, as amorphous as possible, which never took shape. And the two elements, glass for the eyes, text for the ears and understanding, should complement each other and above all prevent one or the other from taking on an aesthetic-plastic or literary form. All in all, I am hugely indebted to you for having stripped bare my Bride stripped bare [the complete title is: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), c. 1915 – 1923]."

"Received your letter and, almost at the same time, the long text at which I was overjoyed. You no doubt know that you are the only person in the world to have put together the gestation of the glass The Large Glass, circa 1923] in all its detail, including even the numerous intentions which were never executed [by Duchamp]. Your patient work has enabled me to relive a period of long years during which the notes were written for the 'Green Box' [the second of the three Boxes Duchamp created and this one was full of written notes] at the same time as the Glass [= The Large Glass] was taking shape. And I confess to you that, not having read these notes for a very long time, I had completely lost all recollection of numerous points not illustrated on the glass and which are a delight to me now [c. 25 years later]."

"Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.. ..Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era.. .Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense."

"..Yes, indeed, what have we been up to? I feel rather like I've retired to the country, in some remote province, for that's what my life is like in N. Y. I see few people and people don’t try to see me anymore as they know they bore me. I write to the Arensberg's once a year and they do the same. There is a general weariness which, I think, is not confined to our generation. To tell the truth, most people prefer war to peace.. .Well, there you are, my dear Yvonne. Nothing as usual. Chess as much as possible: at least chess players don’t talk -"

"Miro came of age as an artist just at the time World War 1. ended. With the end of the war came the end of all the new pre-war art conceptions. A young painter could not start as a Cubist or a Futurist, and Dada was the only manifestation at the moment. Miro began by painting farm scenes from the countryside of Barcelona, his native land.. .A few years later he came to Paris [circa 1914] and found himself among the Dadaists who were, at that time, transmuting into Surrealism. In spite of this contact Miró kept aloof from any direct influence and showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction."

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes."

"The Dada movement was an anti-movement which corresponded to a need born of the first World War. Although neither literary nor pictorial in essence, Dada found its exponents in painters and writers scattered all over the world. Max Ernst's activities in Cologne in 1917 made him the foremost representative of the Dada painters. Between 1919 and 1921 his paintings, drawings and collages depicting the world of the subconscious were already a foretaste of Surrealism.. .In fact his previous achievements had certainly influenced, to a great extent, the literary Surrealist exploration of the subconscious."

"De Chirico [Italian painter, later admired by the Surrealists as 'early Surrealist'] found himself in 1912 confronted with the problem of following one of the roads already opened or of opening a new road. He avoided Fauvism as well as Cubism and introduced what could be called 'metaphysical painting'. Instead of exploiting the coming medium of abstraction, he organized on his canvases the meeting of elements which could only meet in a 'metaphysical world'. These elements, painted in the minutest technique, were 'exposed' on a horizontal plane in orthodox perspective. This technique, in opposition to the Cubist or the purely abstract formula in full bloom at the moment, protected de Chirico’s position and allowed him to lay down the foundation of what was to become Surrealism ten years later."

"You [ Katherine Sophie Dreier; director of the Art Center in New York City; she co-founded with Duchamp and Man Ray the 'Sociéte Anonyme' in Manhattan in 1920] must understand: My attitude toward the book is based upon my attitude towards 'Art' since 1918 – so I am furious myself that you will accept only partly that attitude [in a new publication by Katherine Dreier]. It can be no more question of my life as an artist’s life: [because] I gave it up ten years ago; this period is long enough to prove that my intention to remain outside of any art manifestation is permanent.. .The third question is that I want to be alone as much as possible. This abrupt way to speak of my 'hardening process' is not meant to be mean, but is the result of '42 years of age'.. ..10 000 apologies for this rough letter and affectueusement Dee -"

"I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but never have time, so absorbed I am in playing chess. I play night and day and nothing in the whole world interests me more than finding the right move.. .Nothing transcendental going on here – strikes [in Buenos Aires, where chess competitions were organized that year for not professionals] a lot of strikes, the people are on the move. Painting interests me less and less."

"If a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of the unit of length."

"Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?"