I went to see this picture [Raphael's painting 'Madonna della Sedia' which Renoir saw in Florence in 1882] just to have a good laugh – and I found my… - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I can manage very well with the first grubby backside [of the model] which comes along – provided I find a skin which takes the light well.

One morning one of us had run out of black; and that was the birth of Impressionism.

Nature abhors a vacuum, say the physicists. They could complete their axiom by adding that it has no less a horror of regularity.
Observers know in effect that in spite of the apparent simplicity of the laws which preside at their formulation, the works of nature are infinitely varied, from the most important to the least...
At this time when our French art, still at the beginning of this century so full of penetrating charm and exquisite fantasy, is perishing because of regularity, dryness, and the mania of false perfection that now tends to make the unadorned cleanliness of the engineer into the ideal, we think it is useful to react promptly against the mortal doctrines which threaten to annihilate it...