Best 79 quotes of Pierre-auguste Renoir on MyQuotes

About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of 'impressionism,' and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw.

An artist must eat sparingly and give up a normal way of life.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.

Do not think that it is possible to repeat another period.

Everybody has their reasons.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

God, the king of artists, was clumsy.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child.

I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.

If it [dabbling in art] didn't amuse me, I beg you to believe that I wouldn't do it.

If the painter works directly from nature, he ultimately looks for nothing but momentary effects; he does not try to compose, and soon he gets monotonous.

If the professional schools should succeed in producing skilled workers trained in the technique of their craft, nothing could be done with them if they had no ideal.

If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

I have a horror of the word 'flesh', which has become so shopworn.Why not 'meat'whilethey're about it? What I like is skin, a young girl's skin that is pink and shows that she has a good circulation.

I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable ... But I don't seem to have a single real friend!

I have no rules and no methods... no secrets.

I just keep painting till I feel like pinching. Then I know it's right.

I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.

I'm still afflicted with the malady of research. I don't like what I do, and I paint it out, and paint it out again. I hope this mania will come to an end... I'm like a child at school. The white page must always be evenly written and slap! bang! and there's a blot! I'm still blotting and I'm forty years old.

I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that.

I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.

In painting, as in the other arts, there's not a single process, no matter how insignificant, which can be reasonably made into a formula. You come to nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.

It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.

It is not enough for a painter to be a clever craftsman; he must love to 'caress' his canvas, too.

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them.

I've never let one day go by without painting, or at least without drawing.

I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell. If it doesn't turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it.

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.

My concern has always been to paint nudes as if they were some splendid fruit.

Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.

One can thus state, without fear of being wrong, that every truly artistic production has been conceived and executed according to the principle of irregularity.

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii... I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black - you can do anything with that palette.

Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.

Paint with joy - with the same joy that you would make love to a woman.

People love to be nice, but you must give them the chance.

People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

Progress in painting, there's no such thing! ...One day I went and changed the yellow on my palette. Well, the result was, I floundered for ten years!

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.