ADVERTISEMENT | PUT YOUR AD HERE




[1850's]
RECORDED By ANTONIN PROUST

[In Couture's studio]
I don't know what I'm doing here. Everything we're looking at is absurd. The light is all wrong, the shadows are wrong. When I get to the studio, I feel I'm entering a tomb. Of course I know we can't have models undressing in the street. But there's the countryside and in the summer at least we could do nude studies out in the open, since the nude, we're told, is the Alpha and Omega in art. . . .

[To life models in 'antique' poses]
Can't you behave naturally? Do you stand like that when you go to buy a bunch of radishes at your greengrocer's? ...
We're not in Rome. We don't want to go to Rome. We're in Paris and we intend to stay here. . . .

[To a fellow student]
Do you take me for a history painter? ... Reconstructing historical figures - what a joke! Do you base a man's portrait on his hunting licence? There's only one good way. Capture what you see in one go. When it's right, it's right. When it's wrong, you start again. Anything else is nonsense.

[On Delacroix]
... there's a real masterpiece in the Luxembourg, and that's the Barque of Dante. Suppose we call on Delacroix on the pretext of asking his permission to copy the Barque.
... It's not Delacroix who is cold, it's his theories that are chilling. Still, let's copy the Barque. It's a real piece of painting.

[On Velasquez's Cavaliers]
Now ... that's good clean work. It puts you off the brownsauce school ... Velasquez, El Greco, Valdes Leal, Herrera the Elder, they're really impressive, I'm not making a case for Murillo, I don't like him, nor Zurbarain. But what about Ribera and Goya, you know what Reynolds said of Goya: 'He's a Spanish painter, but of the Gibraltar school.' That soapy Englishman could do with a few painters of Goya's calibre!

[On Courbet's Burial at Ornans, Salon Of 1852]
Yes, the Burial is very good. It can't be said often enough that it is very good, because it's better than anything else. But between ourselves, it still doesnt go far enough. It is too dark.

EDOUARD MANET



Search Now:
In Association with Amazon.com
Search for a 100% Handmade Oil Painting Reproduction:

1st-art-gallery.com
Find your favorite:
In Association with Amazon.com