People From Paris

"I thought only of one thing, to account to myself for the laws of light and perspective. I did not attach any importance to what they found original, new and romantic in me, I sought the picture."

"Ah! Silence is golden. When I was in my observatory at Belle-croix, I dared not move as the silence opened to me a course of discoveries. The families of the wood were then in action. It was the silence that permitted me, immovable as a tree trunk, to see the deer in their hiding-place and at their toilet, to observe the habits of the field rat, of the otter, of the salamander, those fantastic amphibious animals. He who lives in the silence becomes the center of a world; a little more and I could imagine myself the sun of a small creation, if my studies had not recalled to me that I had so much trouble to reproduce a poor tree or a cluster of rushes."

"Sir - Be good enough to allow me to address to you a rather important request with regard to a picture inscribed at the Ministry as 'The Avenue' which at one time you [Minister] kindly ordered from me. This picture.. ..makes me tremble in this exceptional case at the official destiny of my work. I should wish, as well as for another I am now finishing, to be able to give myself in public the advantage of a composition still more developed, and lending itself more to general acceptation. With the help of your goodness and your clear discernment everything will be arranged for the best, as has offered me a place for 'The Avenue' in his gallery, and I would arrange with you to occupy myself with a picture, the same in substance, but with a further development. If you think you can accept my proposition, as I hope you will, you will render me a great service, as well as to , who honours me by anxiously wishing to have the picture.."

"I heard the voices of the trees; the surprises of their movements. Their varieties of form and even their peculiarity of attraction toward the light had suddenly revealed to me the language of the forest. All that world of flora lived as mutes, whose signs I divined, whose passions I discovered. I wished to converse with them and to be able to say to myself, through that other language, painting, that I had put my finger upon the secret of their grandeur."

"..everything has conspired to keep from me the leisure and quiet which I could wish in order to answer you. I have also made two journeys to Paris, the last one to attend the funeral of poor Emile Diaz [son of the Barbizon-painter Narcisse Virgilio Díaz,] of whom you ask news. His poor father was almost mad with grief, which, however, we managed to calm. You were as if present, and our thoughts associated you with the sad scene. During the return my wife was taken ill, and day by day a neuralgic attack came on which has left her very feeble. I do not know what to do, my dear friend. At the commencement I had thought of leaving her at Martigues, but now her mental condition would not permit of my leaving her. She would be afraid of being ill without me there beside her. I think I had better wait until the result of this last attack shall have left her."

"My good Mama, I am always the same.. ..always the same happy life, always fresh for seeing, vigorous for running, and diligent for one end.. .The Mont Blanc is our alarm clock in the morning, our vis-a-vis are the folk on the other side of the lake of Geneva, (8 leagues). I could not say that we get along badly, though we do dispense with the ceremony of saluting each other and saying bon jour when we look out at the window, for we don't meddle in our neighbors' affairs. Our sight carries fifty leagues about us, and we are equally everywhere, although only occupying the space of our two feet. I am delighted with having received my stretchers in order to commence my view of the Alps. I burn with the desire of fulfilling the difficult task of giving upon canvas an idea of the immensity which surrounds me in order to distribute its benefits to those less fortunate than myself.. .I ask without scruple, because it seems to me that I have something to give. I have so much confidence in myself, mon Dieu, when I examine myself."

"We form at La Faucille now a little colony where concord and happiness reign, and have not even for enemies the bears of the country.. .We are situated in a very movable manner, however, on one of the mountains of the Jura, where the inn is the most remarkable building. For I must tell you that we enjoy the company of an unaccountable old man of sixty, who resembles poor Father Colombert as if it were he himself. He is of the ancient nobility. He held the grade of General under the Restoration, having had possessions, which he has lost by the changes. He consoles himself now by carrying all his fortune. With him, a much rarer lot it consists in good humour and strength and philosophy. I have never seen a more excellent man. He is here to search for plants and stones."

"Do not be anxious about [an ordered painting] 'La Ferme' my dear Mr. Hartmann, I am anxious to establish in this picture such a decision deformed, that it may exist, independently of the caprices of the light, and of the influence of the hours of the day. I am regulating it, absolutely as a watchmaker regulates a watch after he has finished it."

"If my painting depicts faithfully and without over-refinement the simple and true character of the place you have frequented, if I succeed.. ..in giving its own life to that world of vegetation, then you will hear the trees moaning under the winter wind, the birds that call their young and cry after their dispersion ; you will feel the old chateau tremble; it will tell you that, as the wife you loved, it too will.. ..disappear and be reborn in multiple forms.. One does not copy with mathematical precision what one sees, but one feels and interprets a real world, all of whose fatalities hold you fast bound."

"Do you see that corner of canvas there [of his painting 'La Ferme'], large as the hand, does it not seem to you that it far surpasses in intensity, in clearness, in expression, the rest of the canvas? [Sensier confirmed]. Well, then, all the rest must pass under the control of that little centre; all that which surrounds it submit itself to that diapason of light and the whole of the picture be as charged with life as that which you see there. Must we not incessantly lift ourselves, surpass ourselves, in this terrible profession of painter?"

"I have seen him seize from the tailor's counter a sheet of invoice-paper upon which I read: [his father:] 'Rousseau, marchand tailleur, Rue Neuve St. Eustache, No. 4, pres la Place des Victoires, fait tout ce qui concerne son etat dans le plus nouveau gout,' and trace, with feverish hand, sparkling arabesques from his imagination, create shadowy lands, covered walks, joyous plains where fancy often distorted reality, but where, rising from this deceptive earth, he appeared to catch glimpses of the world to come."

"He [= Th. Rousseau] does not carry us away, as Francois Millet, toward the sorrowing epochs of rustic life, to reveal their savage grandeur or gloomy solemnity.. ..he does not transport us as Corot, into the lands of twilight, where the light, the freshness and the shadow sing an aerial melody, whose last notes reach out into infinity. No: simple, strong, all impregnated with naturalism, he respects the exact relations of the trees, the animals, man and the sky."

"Indeed, the policy of the Muslim invaders in India ‘seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined (to Indians),’ concludes Danielou."

"Sanskrit was a complete success and became the language of all cultured people in India and in countries under Indian influence. All scientific, philosophical, historical works were henceforth written in Sanskrit, and important texts existing in other languages were translated and adapted into Sanskrit. For this reason, very few ancient literary, religious, or philosophical documents exits in India in other languages. The sheer volume of Sanskrit literature is immense, and it remains largely unexplored."

"India whose ancient borders stretched until Afghanistan, lost with the country of seven rivers (the Indus Valley), the historical center of her civilization. At a time when the Muslim invaders seemed to have lost some of their extremism and were ready to assimilate themselves to other populations of India, the European (British) conquerors, before returning home, surrendered once more to Muslim fanaticism the cradle of Hindu civilization."

"The creation of Sanskrit, the “refined” language, was a prodigious work on a grand scale. Grammarians and semanticists of genius undertook to create a perfect language, artificial and permanent, belonging to no one, that was to become the language of the entire culture. Sanskrit is built on a basis of Vedic and the Prakrits, but has a much more complex grammar, established according to a rigorous logic. It has an immense vocabulary and a very adaptable grammar, so that words can be grouped together to express any nuance of an idea, and verb forms can be found to cover any possibility of tense, such as future intentional in the past, present continuing into the future, and so on. Furthermore, Sanskrit possesses a wealth of abstract nouns, technical and philosophical terms unknown in any other language. Modern Indian scholars of Sanskrit culture have often remarked that many of the new concepts of nuclear physics or modern psychology are easy for them to grasp, since they correspond exactly to familiar notions of Sanskrit terminology."

"An enigmatic character, sly and acetic, ambitious and devout, one of those gurus who exert an incredible magnetism on the crowds and often lead them to disaster (…) a sentimental religiosity coupled with a lack of scruples (…) During his lifetime, no one could stop his fateful influence. It will take a long time before the victims of his charisma, in India as well as in the West, dare to make an account of his actions.... [Gandhi’s religion consisted in] ‘extreme puritanism, the strictest vegetarianism, the total absence of metaphysical concerns and philosophical culture, and, conversely, the grossest religious sentimentalism’ in which ‘icy puritanism masks dishonesty.’.... [Even Rabindranath Tagore] ‘detested the ambitious and wrong-headed Gandhi’ as ‘a very dangerous man’. ... ‘This character with his ascetic appearance always had the unconditional support of the great Indian capitalists’ and that ‘his social reforms always ended up benefiting the merchant bourgeoisie.’"

"From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races. Mahmoud Ghazni was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked."

"We have no texts explaining the rites and ceremonial of the Dionysiac mysteries in the Greco-Etrusco-Roman world, although there are allusions which can often be clarified with the aid of Indian texts... By studying Shivaite rites [from India], the only ones which have continued down to our own times, the real practices of the Dionysiac rites and “mysteries” may be reconstructed."

"Symbolically, Ganesha represents the basic unity of the macrocosm and microcosm, the immense being (the elephant) and the individual being (man). This highly implausible identity is however a fundamental reality and the key to all mystic or ritual experience as well as to Yogic possibilities. Without being aware of Ganesha, and without worshipping him, no accomplishment is possible."

"When the two boys [Ganesha and Skanda] were of marriageable age, Shiva and Parvati did not know which of the children to marry off first. So they proposed a competition: We shall celebrate the marriage of the one who first returns after having gone round the world. The clever Ganesha walked around his parents and said to them “You are the Universe”. He was considered the winner and his wedding was celebrated with Siddhi (Success) and Buddhi (Intelligence), the two daughters of the Lord of the World - Visharupa."

"The faithful of Shiva or Dionysus seek contact with those forces which...lead to a refusal of the politics, ambitions and limitations of ordinary social life. This does not involve simply a recognition of world harmony, but also an active participation in an experience which surpasses and upsets the order of material life."

"Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today."

"He [Troyon] does not sentimentalize his animals, nor concern himself with the drama of their character and gesture. He takes them as components in a general scheme; and he paints them as he has seen them in Nature - enveloped in atmosphere and light, and in an environment of grass and streams and living leafage."

"It was accident and a journey to Holland which revealed to Troyon his true mission, that of an animal painter of the first rank.. .At a distance of two centuries Troyon continued the traditions of the celebrated Dutch animal painters without imitating them. Paul Potter was to find a successor worthy of him.. .Fancy the astonishment at the sight of Troyon's animals, with their large life, their broad brush-work in deep, pure colors, studied with a discriminating sympathy for every race and species, and moving through landscapes of a master's creation. These were not the fashionable stuffed beasts, but living, moving herds, stretching themselves luxuriously in the sun, breathing the breezes cool with morning, or huddling close together at the approach of the storm."

"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."

"In 1846 Troyon went to the Netherlands, and at the Hague saw Paul Potter's famous 'Young Bull'. From the studies he made of this picture, of Cuyp's sunny landscapes, and Rembrandt's noble masterpieces he soon evolved a new method of painting, and it is only in works produced after this time that Troyon's true individuality is revealed. When he became conscious of his power as an animal painter he developed with rapidity and success."

"Did not Troyon tell me to enter the studio of Couture [in Paris]? It is needless to tell you how decided was my refusal to do so [End of 1859]. I admit even that it cooled me, temporarily at least, in my esteem and admiration of Troyon.. ..and [I] after all, connected myself only with artists who were seeking."

"It is the early morning [in the painting 'Windmill' . The sun struggles dimly amid the enveloping mist; the wind rises; then the huge old frame, with worm eaten planks, begins to creak with regular throbs, like the beatings of the heart, as the great membranous wings stretch themselves in silhouette against the pale splendor of the dawn."

"..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 to much. However, don't neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them."

"Your description of Troyon and Rousseau, for instance, is lively enough to give me some idea of which of their manners they are done in. There were other paintings from the time of Troyon's municipal pasture that had a certain 'mood' that one would have to call 'dramatic', even though they aren't figure paintings."

"I have made as many as eighteen [rather definitive sketches of cattle] in one month.."

"Year after year I went with Troyon to Barbizon. On rainy days, when we were unable to sketch in the forest, we visited the farms where the watchers of cattle and the tenders of geese posed as our models; more often still to the stables, where we painted the animals. Here Troyon executed the most charming things in the world; and from 1846 to 1848 I constantly implored him to introduce them into his landscapes."

"The first years of the painter [Troyon] were dogged by poverty, which saturated his spirit with a bitterness from which it never got free. Arrived later, by the evolution of his style, to renown and wealth, Troyon preserved the gloom of these humble beginnings. In this he was at fault. Did he not share the public neglect with the first landscape painters of the age? Had he suffered more, and more unjustly, than the chiefs of his company [the painters of Barbizon]? And then, if I must express my full opinion, would the canvases of Troyon, as a landscapist grandly brushed as they are, have sufficed to establish his high renown?"

"When the landscape had struck him especially by its general planes, he flung it on the canvas in those marvelous sketches which the artist refused to carry on further because he had nothing to add to this massy statement; at other times he insinuates himself into the details as exhaustively as possible and refines on his work to the utmost limits of execution. In this way the career of Daubigny is based on the simple and truthful art-theory that the handling of a picture ought to reflect the mood felt."

"The dwellers on the banks of the Oise and the Seine knew him [Daubigny] well. The ambulant landscape painter was more especially designated by the title of the 'Captain', a rank which vastly flattered him, for by dint of living on the water he had acquired a sailor's roughness and a sailor's pride in good navigation. The boat used by Daubigny was arranged for long voyages; the cooking was done on board; there was a good wine cellar; you drank deep and you worked hard. The sketches accumulated; and when winter was come, Daubigny returned to Paris provisioned with the booty of art and nature, the landscapes which, towards the close of his life, collectors and dealers battled for. How many times I have seen him thus, in his latter days, when his hair had grown white.."

"The boat used by Daubigny was arranged for long voyages; the cooking was done on board; there was a good wine cellar; you drank deep and you worked hard. The sketches accumulated, and when winter was come, Daubigny returned to Paris provisioned with the booty of art and nature, the landscapes which, toward the close of his life, collectors and dealers battled for."

"Those were the times when Les Vallées [ Auverse ] were full of life. Monsieur Daubigny would go off on the plain in the early morning, work an hour or two, and then start for he river. Sometimes he would come to draw my donkey or have some rabbits let loose in the kitchen here to sketch from. I always attended to his garden in which he was very much interested."

"It was among the apple-blossoms, in the pure air of the country, that he passed his earlier years and imbibed that love of the fields which became the passion of his life."

"It is a pity that M. Daubigny, the landscape painter, with a sentiment so true, just and natural, contents himself with a first impression and neglects at this point the details. His pictures are no more than sketches, and sketches little advanced; it is to a system that one should attribute this careless manner which we believe dangerous for the future of the painter if he does not quickly abandon it. Each object delineates itself by an apparent or real contour, but the landscapes of M. Daubigny offer little except spots of color placed in juxtaposition. It needs, however, but a few days' labor to make excellent pictures of these insufficient preparations."

"Mr. Daubigny is again to be found among the new landscapist group. I do not know anyone who was a more intimate feeling for nature, and who can better make it felt [in his former paintings]. But why does he only produce [now] rough sketches like 'La Moisson' and the 'Vue Pris sur les Bords de la Seine'. This latter is particularly beautiful. Is Mr. Daubigny afraid if ruining his work by finishing it? But that would be an avowal of weakness. I have a better opinion of his talent and I am convinced that a man who has begun so well could not finish badly."

"[at Daubigny's place where] ..animated conversations on the direct study of nature or the comparative merits of Haarlem paint driers and thick oil paints were often interrupted bu bursts of merriment greeting a witticism of one of the guests, who included non other than Corot, Daumier, Geoffroy-Dechaume, etc.."

"I thank heaven that I was born in the same century as this remarkable artist [= Daubigny] ]."

"Another landscape painter, one of the first of our time, whose beginnings were rough, was always supported and guided by Corot. M. Daubigny well knows how, in hours of depression, his master appeared, as if by chance, and just in time to wind him up with good advice and praises."

"First and foremost, the masterly etching, 'The Bush', by Daubigny/Ruisdael. [= Daubigny's etching 'The bush', he made after Jacob van Ruisdael ].. ..I plan to do two drawings, either in sepia or something else, one of them after this etching [by Daubigny] — the other [etching, made] after T. Rousseau's 'The oven in Les Landes'. This latter sepia is already done — it's true — but if you compare it with Daubigny's etching, you'll understand that it becomes weak, even though the sepia drawing considered on its own may very well have a certain tone and sentiment. I have to go back to it and work on it again.. ..I couldn't tell you how happy I feel to have taken up drawing again. It had already been on my mind for a long time, but I always saw the thing as impossible and beyond my reach."

"I was not able to work in the several excursions and ascensions made in the neighborhood, where it was very beautiful. One is so surprised by these grand aspects that it would be necessary to remain a long time before finding the interpretation capable of rendering them. I am going to finish the season at Auvers. There is nothing like one's natural every-day surroundings where one really takes pleasure. The pictures we do then feel the effect of their home-life, and the sweet sensations we experience in it."

"Adieu, adieu, I am going to see up there [after death] whether friend Corot has found me any new subjects for landscape painting."

"My travelling companion [= Corot] has just abandoned me. He's a perfect Father Joy, this Father Corot. He is altogether a wonderful man, who mixes jokes in with his very good advice."

"Speak to me no more of the old masters. Not one of them can stand up to this sturdy fellow [=Courbet ]."

"I have bought at Auverse thirty perches of land, all covered with beans, on which I shall plant some legs of mutton when you come to see me. They are building me a studio there, some eight by six meters, with several rooms around it, which will serve me, I hope, next Spring [of 1861]. Father Corot has found Auvers very fine, and has engaged me to fix myself there for a part of the year, wishing to make rustic landscapes with figures. I shall be truly well of there, in the midst of a good farming country, where the ploughs do not yet go by steam."