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… - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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

It [his participating in the 7th exhibition of the Impressionists, combined with showing his work on the official Salon] isn't exactly a joy, but as I have said, it lets me out of the revolutionary side of the business, which I'm nervous of.. .It's a little weakness which I hope will be forgiven me [by the other impressionists].. .Delacroix used to say, quite rightly, that a painter should win as many honours as possible.

I studied a good deal in the museum at Naples; the Pompeian paintings are extremely interesting from every aspect. So I am staying in the sun – not to paint portraits but while I am warming myself and looking hard at things I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters. Raphael didn't work out-of-doors, but he studied the sunlight all the same – his frescoes are full of it. So, by looking around outside, I have finished by seeing only the broad harmonies, and am no longer preoccupied with the little details, which only extinguish the sunlight, instead of increasing its brilliance. I hope therefore, when I get back to Paris, to produce something which will be the outcome of all these general studies, and to give you the benefit of them [in a letter written during his three-weeks-stay, working with Paul Cezanne at l'Estaque, near Marseille]