Painters From France

"My dear Sensier, - I shall be greatly obliged if after reading and sealing the enclosed letter, you will take it to Rue du Delta, No. 8. [Paris].. ..Jaque [common friend and painter] and I have settled to stay here [ Barbizon ] for some time, and have accordingly each of us taken rooms. The prices are excessively low compared to those in Paris; and as it is easy to get to town if necessary, and the country is superbly beautiful, we hope to work more quietly here, and perhaps do better things. In fact, we intend to spend some time here.. .I wish you good-bye, with many hearty embraces. Jacque sends you warm remembrances, and will answer your letter tomorrow."

"I remember being awakened one morning by voices in the room where I slept. There was a whizzing sound which made itself heard between the voices now and then. It was the sound of spinning-wheels, and the voices were those of women spinning and carding wool. The dust of the room danced in a ray of sunshine which shone through the high narrow window that lighted the room.."

"Eh! Are you coming here to give us some more of your fine figures ? Are you going to make men and women on your own plan? You know the master [ [[w:Paul Delaroche|Delaroche] ]] doesn't like this Caen cookery. - ('What do I care?' answered Millet, according to Sensier's report, 'I don't come here to please anybody. I come because there are antiques and models to teach me, that is all. Do I object to your figures, made of butter and honey'?)"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"What do I care? 'I don't come here [studying with the Paris' artist & teacher Paul Delaroche to please anybody. I come because there are antiques and models to teach me, that is all. Do I object to your figures, made of butter and honey [to Alfred Boisseau?"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[I] preferred paintings full of daring to the nullities welcomed into every Salon."

"[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] ]."

"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."

"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.."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"When I look at Hokusai, I think of Marquet - and vice versa... ...I don't mean imitation of Hokusai, I mean similarity with him."

"The colors, exceptionally violent, have cleared a well-known path.. ..Everything has gone according plan, as if expected. Everything except for the end result: a general effect that is, for Marquet, superb."

"The [Albert] Marquet of my youth [till c. 1904].. ..was a fighter, reliable, rock-steady, a sure companion."

"Do you realize how sensitive Marquet is... ...do you see that he has suffered, and can you imagine how much. Have you noticed that he is easily bruised and that you will have to guess at his bruises because he will never say a word?"

"..a sort of vengeful rage [Marcelle Marquette about Marquet's early street drawings."

"It was not his fault that what was exciting to him was of no interest to others, and if his timidity prevented him from explaining himself."

"At work, he narrowed his eyes, closed one eye, then the other, taking advantage of the fact of not having the same vision in both, and then born up by a force which hardened his face and his glance, he appeared in all his singleness of purpose."

"When I draw, 1 am as pre-occupied before a gas-jet as before a human being."

"It is in working [= painting] that you will find yourself.."

"Over the course of the war I came to understand a lot. The Communists are right.. .It's terrible that many people haven't understood anything and want to return everything back.."

"I do not know how to write or speak but only to paint and draw. Look at what I have done. Whether I have succeeded in explaining myself or not, in any case, if you do not understand my work, through your fault or mine, I can do no more."

"..a certain burst of light and colour, so awkward and so clumsy.. ..[he also added: A principle of form and of design is the most important element to be found in [Marquet's work]."

"Henri Matisse and I were already working, before the 1900 Exhibition, as far back as 1898, in what was later to be called the Fauve style."

"Our first Salon des Independants, where I think we [Matisse and Marquet] were the only two painters to express ourselves in pure colors, was in 1901."

"I painted only [in pure colours] at Arcueil and at the Luxembourg Gardens."

"It has happened that I have begun a canvas in a brilliant tonality, going on to finish it in a grey notation. (1898)"

"I was certain that they [ Poussin's paintings which Marquet copied frequently in the 1880's] would never bore me."

"..the Matisse of long ago, so alert, such a battler, always giving as good as he got."

"Painting, even if we call it bad, if it is what helps to keep someone alive, how can we condemn it?"

"Let's leave the studio and go watch what moves.."

"Life is beautiful, and this work is even more beautiful than life."

"The essential thing is to elongate the women and especially to make them slim. After that it just remains to enlarge their jewels. They are ravished."