Narcisse Virgilio Díaz

"What does it matter! [poverty], One of these days I shall have carriages and a golden crutch. My brush will win them for me."

"At last, here is a new man [ Millet ], who has the knowledge which I would like to have, and movement, color, expression, too, - here is a painter!"

"Patience ! They will come to it gradually! Rousseau has sold a landscape for five hundred francs; for my part, I have sold a view of Fontainebleau for seventy-five francs. And I am commissioned to ask you for companion sketches to your drawings. And this time, instead of twenty francs, they are to pay you twenty-five! (Millet replied resignedly: 'If I could only sell two drawings a week at that price all would go right!'"

"You paint stinging-nettles, and I prefer roses."

"Your women bathing come from the cow house."

"You cannot imagine the pleasure you are giving me. This woman and this infant [of an old picture, made in his early years] are my own family. The baby was in its cradle one fine summer day; the mother had fallen asleep beside it. In one hour I did the sketch from nature. It used to hang over my bed, and it cheered my awakening every day for years. Then arrived a morning when we were more in want of necessaries than usual. A dealer came along and offered me a hundred and fifty francs.. ..he insisted on taking that one in particular. As ill luck would have it, my rent was due next day. I was not in a position to be too particular. He gave me a bank note of one hundred francs, and ten hundred-sous pieces. I made him out a receipt, and he never perceived that he was carrying off a bit of my heart. Ah!, it was hard."

"Diaz de la Pena sets out from the principle that a palette is a picture. As for overall harmony M. Diaz thinks that you will invariably find it. Of draughtmanship – the draughmanship of movement, the draughmanship of the colourists – there is no question; the limbs of all his little figures behave for all the world like bundles of rags, or like arms or legs scattered in a railway accident. I would rather have a kaleidoscope... It is true that M. Diaz is a colourist; but enlarge his frame by a foot, and his strength will fail him, because he does not recognize the necessity for general color. That is why his pictures leave no memory behind them."

"The sun has lost one of its most beautiful rays."

"He [Diaz] was one of those who gave celebrity to the village of Barbizon, in the forest of Fontainebleau; he had lived there with Theodore Rousseau and Millet; with Rousseau especially, whom he considered the 'master'; in his private collection he [Diaz] had two enchanting little landscapes of his; and when you talked to Diaz of his own art, he would carry you off to the works of his great acquaintance, saying: 'Here are the bon-bons [the little landscapes of Rousseau]'."

"In the group of [ Barbizon school-]painters beyond the average, Diaz de la Pena is the great artist of the fantastical. Anything serves him as a pretext for bringing to light his marvelous aptitude as a colorist.. .He renders the enchantments of the landscape flooded with sunshine or the forest plunged in luminous twilight, with beams filtering through the thick leafage; he dazzles the eye with all the seductions of a grand colorist.. .He is the grand virtuoso of the palette, making sport of difficulties. With him everything is of the first impulse; his work is thrown off with brio; the enchantment of the color carries it along.."

"The coming on of winter was always dangerous to him. In 1876, Diaz felt himself attacked by an affection of the chest which rendered all work impossible. He went to Mentone, where for an instant he seemed to revive with a new existence. It was there that he executed his last pictures. Death took him by surprise, still at his work. It was impossible to overcome this character, still full of energy, during the final sickness, unless by taking the brush from his hands and shattering it."

"In his landscapes the Spaniard [Diaz] betrays himself.. .Diaz has in him [the painter Theodore Rousseau ] a little of Fortuny. Beside the great genius wrestling for truth and the virile seriousness of Rousseau, beside the gloomy, powerful landscapes of Dupre, with their deep, impassioned poetry, the sparkling and flattering pictures of Diaz seem to be rather light wares. For him nature is a keyboard on which to play capricious fantasies. His pictures have the effect of sparkling diamonds, and one must surrender one's self to his charm without asking its cause; otherwise it evaporates. Diaz has, perhaps, too much of the talent of the juggler. It sparkles as in a magic kaleidoscope. 'You paint stinging-nettles, and I prefer roses', is the characteristic expression which he [Diaz] used to Millet."

"The pictures of Diaz are not landscapes, for the land is wanting; they are 'tree-scapes', and their poetry lies in the sunbeams which dance, playing around them. 'Have you seen my last [tree-] stem?' he would inquire of the visitors to his studio."

"From Theodore Rousseau, Diaz learned much of the technique of his trade, much of the secret of light and shade, and of the art of composition. In the matter of the use of the pigment, too, Rousseau gave Diaz much information, for he had made a study of the chemical properties of colour, a thing that had never occurred to Diaz, impetuous, unbridled enthusiast that he was. I have said elsewhere that Diaz at Barbizon, with the serious Rousseau working near him, turned his attention to a more sober interpretation of landscape, wherein he gave greater thought to form, tone, and construction. He studied trees, rocks, and gave greater attention to the relation of skies, distances, and foreground."