Edgar Degas Quotes

Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doit jamais être une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.

Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

I would rather do nothing than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything. My memories will do better.

I want to be famous but unknown!

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see

The study of nature is of no significance, for painting is a conventional art, and it is infinitely more worthwhile to learn to draw after w:Holbein.

I put it [a still life of a pear, made by Manet there [on the wall, next to Ingres' painting 'Jupiter'], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

Drawing is not the same as form; it is a way of seeing form.

You must do over the same subject ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must appear accidental, even a movement.

So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.

I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.

I will not admit that a woman can draw like that.

Visitor: Monsieur Degas, were there any of Monet's pictures at the Durand-Ruel exhibition?
Degas: Why, I met Monet himself there, and I said to him, 'Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes!' His pictures were always too draughty for me. If it had been any worse I should have had to turn up my coat collar.