Edgar Degas Quotes

It is very good to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what you can't see any more but is in your memory. It is a transformation in which imagination and memory work together. You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary.

C'est très bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son mémoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingéniosité collabore avec la mémoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappé, c'est-à-dire le nécessaire.

A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

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.

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

In our beginnings, Fantin, Whistler and I were all on the same road, the road from Holland [Dutch 17th century painters]

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

Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

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

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

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

Even working from nature you have to compose.