Printmakers

"Bonnard was the humorist among us; his nonchalant gaiety, his wit was evident in his pictures [many of daily-life in the Paris' streets], in which a kind of satiric quality was always embodied n the decorative spirit.. .Bonnard did not resemble Denis or Vuillard in any way, yet all three approached life with a noble determination which was a god-send to me."

"[Bonnard] catches fleeting poses, steals unconscious gestures, crystallises the most transient expressions."

"It's not just the colors that radiate in a Bonnard; there's also the heat of mixed emotions, rubbed into smoothness, shrouded in chromatic veils and intensified by unexpected spatial conundrums and by elusive, uneasy figures."

"It should always be remembered that Fantin's still-lifes were made for a Victorian [English] public.. ..and that from his earliest visit to London he had been intrigued by the Pré-Raphaelites."

"Fantin your picture is going to be very fine - the great mass of light is excellent - It will do you a lot of good, as it's a picture which is bound to bring you a lot of attention - I should like to talk to you about myself and my own painting - But at this moment I am so discouraged - always the same thing - always such painful and uncertain work! I am so slow! - When will my execution be quicker when I say execution I mean something quite different - you understand - I produce very little, because I scrape off so much - for the Paris Salon I am thinking of sending my picture of the Thames which you saw one day with Edwards"

"(5 January.)..Oh if you could have listened in to the conversation you would have been beside yourself! Well then I cauterize their wounds once again! - And I had not forgotten during the evening to say 'And what is Fantin doing for you now?' 'Nothing at the moment.' - 'Oh, but what is the next copy he's doing for you? [Fantin-Latour made copies of old masters' paintings] 'I don't know' - 'But he's supposed to be doing something more for you isn't he! a Titian I thought?. 'No not now' - 'Oh I thought he was!' You see - As I leave, I invite Haden and his artist (a poor relation of the family) to dine with myself and Alphonse, for the Monday week - They accept! Much ceremony! and we wish each other good evening! - Ah! now Fantin my good friend light up your pipe!"

"Many young women's hands would be incapable of doing what I see there,' said the Prince, pointing to Mme de Villeparisis' unfinished watercolours. And he has asked her whether she had seen the flower painting by Fantin-Latour which had recently been exhibited."

"My dear Fantin two words more and then I shall send you this long affair - I have had your two letters and I was very pleased to get them - Your picture will be superb! The composition very fine, and I can see the heads painted by you in magnificent colour - The bust will perhaps be difficult to arrange - but I have the greatest confidence in you - Oh I wish I knew a little of what you know!.."

"his flower-paintings.. ..are all marvels of colours and artistic sensibility. They are as compelling as they are charming, in fact one might even call them moving. They are tonal rhythms, freshness, abandon, surprising vivacity. Their beauty captivates. This is nature with all.. ..that fleeting radiance that is the fate of flower.. .Delicacy of expression being the essence of his art, Fantin seems to be the visual poet of flowers."

"Dear Fantin.. .As for me nothing could be more charming for me than to be introduced to my Compatriots by Fantin - Besides you know that I am very flattered that you kept me when you destroyed the painting - it's much to be regretted all the same this demolition of our earlier works! I have done it too often! - and wept so much afterwards! Do not ever do it my dear Fantin - Now I would much like to know what is the portrait of me [made by Fanton-Latour] that you say Valentin has sold to this stranger?. - So try to find this out and let me know I beg you - If the American does not buy your portrait of me I could perhaps get it sold for you here.."

"Meanwhile here is another order - You must do two flower pictures the same size, as those you have just done for Mr Ionides - You will get 150 frs for each - Do them straight away and you will have the money immediately - I wrote yesterday (on getting your letter) to Mr Ionides and Dilberoglou, asking them to send you the money that is 300 frs from one, and 100 frs from the other That makes 400 frs - you will receive it tomorrow - Now I must tell you - Do not spoil your fortunes which are rising, as you see, by a lower price for the large flowers - The point to start from is easy - 200 frs for the little ones (that is the price we shall ask after this next order) so for the large pictures the price is proportional. There must be a price for each size - I suppose that the large bunches we are talking about should be around 300 to 350 frs each - As for the Wedding in Cana - do not make it too big for the 1000 frs.."

"I do not understand your silence you know all the same how interested I always am in what you are doing. you also know that there are not many of us who understand each other we have always got on well together. I have seen and I see every day how little people like us[.] Between ourselves there are things we cannot say to others.. ..you cannot imagine how little I find myself in sympathy with other people.. ..- I do not want to lose another day, one hour this year I have no hope I have lost it and you know how unlike me that is. at the moment I have several studies to do at the Louvre order[s] which are going to bring me many others [p. 2] as soon as this time has passed I want to do two large pictures for the Salon[.] I think of nothing else.. .I am becoming more and more the Fantin of the old days you know here I am today but neither discouraged nor bored. I have my own views now nothing can distract me.."

"The oeuvre of Frédéric Bazille is unclassifiable."

"You speak to me of Rembrand, of this famous, of this great, of this giant.. .I would very much like to see the painting by Rembrandt of which you speak, because it should be quiet splendid. I eat it up from here (you know the fashionable phrase)"

"I see Legros less often sometimes at Andler's as little as possible it means I get to bed late and I am short of funds, it is very pleasant nonetheless Courbet is so charming, Legros often goes there they get on very well he has some superb articles in the figaro. in the gazette des Beaux Arts.. ..then he will have one in the courrier du Commerce those are the ones I know about. success, women, good food, wine, beer, new acquaintances as a result of these articles, in short an accolade !!!!!!!!.. ..success can be harmful, it makes you relax, you sit on it and are distracted.. ..you alone should correct the faults, you know what I think of advice, correction. the gifted man should walk alone, straight to his goal, what happens is nothing, rejection, success, selling pleasing, all that is nonsense."

"Well! according to the sketch your picture [which Whistler sent him in a letter] seems well-composed, the lines of sky, sea, the position of the figures all that seems very, very well done[,] on opening the letter it struck me immediately, an impression of decorative ornamentation which makes a good picture appeal to the eye as well - upside down and any other way up. Arrangement, layout, composition. etc - mysterious words harmonious laws - in no way conventional - needs of the Artist glory of the Raphael's Michelangelo's etc etc - for me a repetition a hesitation, a matter of feeling - which should also be a law, a mathematical thing, like form, like light, colour[.] I find similarities with the colour method which works by opposing colours to arrive at a harmony that is to say to make a canvas a complete whole, to put into a small space an image with all the forces all the principles of nature - [instead of showing a part of it].."

"I even belief that the schools and artistic movements is past. After the Romantic movement, born of classicizing exaggeration, after the Realist movement, product of the follies of Romanticism, it may be seen that there is a great foolishness in all these ideas. We are going to achieve a personal manner of feeling."

"The first encounter with Otto Mueller's paintings was in Berlin, at the showing of the 'Rejects of the Berlin Secession'. which took place at the Galerie Macht in the spring of 1910. And we met him personally the very same day in his studio on Mommsenstrasse. This meeting was significant for all of us and occurred at a fruitful moment; and, as a matter of course, he belonged to Die Brücke community from then on."

"In the autumn of 1884 I went to Paris. The spirit that greeted me was certainly more impressive than in Germany. I studied in a famous school. The French who I met there seemed to me not at all equipped. Traditional views. I was there for three years. I never found a talent. Among the Germans, in particular at the Academy of Munich, there was a lot more momentum. I admire the French painting from Watteau to Monet, otherwise there is nothing that can be said to be exceptional."

"My conscious motivation was to bring German art up to the highest level. I saw what the French artists could do since some time, we could do much more. I spoke in front of our youth, I can say with success."

"He himself omitted certain things in his pictures that his contemporaries deemed to be of importance, in order to capture the essence.. ..with the greatest possible simplicity."

"Since I am not well and have difficulty walking.. .More than anything else, I need lots of rest; even letter-writing is a strain."

"Appreciation Otto Mueller has until now been hampered by the circumstance that his timeless art provides no recognizable points of reference, has been spared the problems surrounding contemporary art and is difficult to classify under any of the categories that are so popular wit his terminology addicts."

"[the nicest artist and his works were] always of a high standard and truly free works of art and genuine because they matured freely and purely on the basis of his philosophy of life."

"Diseases, a paralysis of the left side, a monstrous right hand tremor strengthened by the efforts by the needle [for engraving] and caused by previous excesses with alcohol, prevent me from doing any calligraphic craftsmanship. A constant effort to achieve my goal - I've never reached the degree hoped - has exacerbated my life, and every job has ended with the depression of having to go on with this life."

"My principle aim is to express my experience of landscape and human beings with the greatest possible simplicity."

"I have always taken the art of the ancient Egyptians as my model, even in purely technical matters."

"I depict my life and experiences in my works of art."

"I will try to develop an entirely new style and I am sure I will succeed."

"By new style I meant mainly technical aspects. It is impossible to experience things from an entirely new angle through will-power; it has to mature in solitude."

"As the misfortune befell in November [1918], I threw myself into the woodcut.. .It is a technique that provokes one to confession, to the unmistakable statement of what one finally means. It, or far more she, enforces a certain general validity of expression.. .I have finished a number of large woodcuts that deal with all of the distress of the times."

"Jongkind divides his colors more and more, puts them in juxtaposition, and by about 1875 he is on equal footing with Sisley, and later with Seurat."

"As he painted them [the sailing ships, in the harbor of Le Havre ] again that summer of 1865, Courbet and Whistler were his neighbours. At Deauville the robust Courbet reveled in swimming and was enjoying himself as usual. Whistler was with him. Courbet still spoke of him as his pupil, although Whistler had outgrown his influence."

"He has spent his childhood near a small port [Vlaardingen, near Rotterdam ]. The boats on the quayside, the proud three-masters leaving their home waters to sail the seas have always haunted his imagination and fed his imagination.. .His views of the river w:Scheldt, near Antwerp, painted during his most colorful period, are among his most memorable works."

"He painted them 'after life', but one has to agree on the definition of this phrase insofar as he was concerned. A painting by Jongkind 'after life' is not a straightforward copy of the motif he had settled on. It is the reproduction of the same subject treated through watercolour. His first sketch is a watercolour. It is with his watercolour brush that he captured directly the impression of nature"

"One must not forget that Boudin had received lessons from a master, Jongkind, whose oeuvre, especially in the watercolors, is the origin along with Corot of what has been called Impressionism."

"Watercolor provides him with an autonomous art-form, and attracts him with a charm, of which he is fully aware, and because of this he prepares all the means necessary to capture on paper the beauty of values, whether they be questions of color or of balance."

"One must be particularly knowledgeable in order to render the sky and the land with this apparent disorder, here [in Jongkind's art, showed at the Salon of 1868] everything is true (French: 'vrai')."

"There at the moment in Honfleur.. ..Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously.. .There's lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful.."

"Jongkind is beginning to make us digest a kind of painting of which the hard outer skin hides an excellent and most tasty fruit. I too have profited by coming in the door which he already had forced, and I have begun, albeit timidly, tp present my seascapes.. ..the longer one looks at his watercolors, the more one wonders how he does them! They are made from nothing and yet the fluidity and the density of the sky and clouds are reproduced with unbelievable precision.. ..Nothing alters him, success, honours, fortunes, attacks or disdain. He sizes men up for himself; he knows that the disdained Corot is the master of landscape, that the insulted Monet will soon be the glory of his age; he knows how to assess the weakness in the art of Isabey or Troyon."

"With him [Jongkind] all lies in impression."

"Jongkind's craft hardly concerns him; and this results in the fact that, before his canvases, it does not concern you either. The sketch finished, the painting completed, you do not trouble yourself with the execution, it disappears before the power of the charm of the effect.."

"He works himself up into a frenzy, on order to make great strides, before returning to Paris."

"[Jongkind].. ..his painting was too new and far too artistic to be appreciated in 1862 at his prices. Moreover, no one was as bad at making himself valued, as he was. He was a straight-forward and simple kind of man, who could hardly speak bad French and was very shy. But he was very outgoing that day [in 1864, somewhere around [[w:Le Havre| Le Havre] ]. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained the whys and wherefores underlining his work and thereby, completed the training that I had already received from Boudin. He became from this moment my true master and it [is] to him, that I owe the definitive training of my eyes."

"Monsieur Jongkind is a very fine Colorist. His slightly over-bright colors belong to him alone, his vividly sketched landscapes have great character, his paintings could be recognized among thousands. This is a fairly rare merit today. Monsieur Jongkind is opening up a very pretty part in art. It is not a royal highway, but where he walks by himself, without being elbowed out."

"You know that the only marine painter that we have, Jongkind, is dead to art. He is completely mad."

"One of the most precious gifts he [Jongkind] owed Schelfhout was his initiation to quick sketching after nature, rendering the full aspect of a landscape through a wash of summary colours over a nervous and solidly constructed drawing."

"..in 1863 [Jongkind] begins the most beautiful series of watercolors that exists in the world."

"My specialty is really painting moonlight – but I will not forget the sunshine."

"What I have suffered is unbelievable.. .I was given nothing [for his paintings in the Salon of 1855], not even a honorable mention."