Edgar Degas: Trending quotes (page 2)

“I'm glad to say I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.”

Edgar Degas

"Technical Details" (p. 70)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Death

“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.”

Edgar Degas

remark in a conversation with the writer Moore, ca. 1875; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 117
1855 - 1875

Life , God , Painting

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

Edgar Degas

John Murray Gibbon, Pagan Love (1922), ch. xiv
Misattributed

Success , Dead

“Certainly, Vollard, but listen: will you have a special dish without butter prepared for me? Mind you, no flowers on the table, and you must have dinner at half past seven sharp. I know you won't have your cat around and please don't allow anybody to bring a dog. And if there are to be any women I hope they won't come reeking of perfume. How horrible all those odors are when there are so many things that really smell good, like toast - or even manure! Ah - (a short hesitation), and very few lights. My eyes, you know, my poor eyes!”

Edgar Degas

"Early Encounters" (p. 20)
Quoted by Vollard who came to invite Degas for dinner, that evening
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Women , Dogs , Hope , Cats

“ladies in muslin draped on porches at the fronts of their little houses.... shops bursting with fruit, and the contrast between the lively hum and the bustle of the offices with the immense black animal force... The black world I have not the time to explore; there are some real gifts of colour and drawing in these forests of ebony. It will seem amazing to live among white people when I get back to Paris. I love silhouettes so much, and these silhouettes walk.”

Edgar Degas

quote on his journey through America during 1872
Quote in Degas' letter to his friend Tissot, Lousiana, America 1872; as cited in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 113-114
1855 - 1875

Love , People , World , Quotes

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

Edgar Degas

Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.
Quoted in Forbes Watson, Mary Cassatt (1932)
this quote is referring to some etchings by Cassatt, which Degas admired
quotes, undated

Drawing

“Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience; but these women of mine are honest, simple folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their physical condition. Here is another; she is washing her feet. It is as if you looked through a key-hole.”

Edgar Degas

Quoted by George Moore, in Impressions and Opinions (1891)
1876 - 1895

Women

“You need the natural life; I, the artificial.”

Edgar Degas

À vous il faut la vie naturelle, à moi la vie factice.
Degas, quoted by George Moore, Impressions and Opinions (1891)
These words were spoken, Moore states, to 'a landscape painter'
1876 - 1895

Life , Nature

“I remember a story my father used to tell. As he was coming home one day, he ran across a group of men who were firing on the troops from an ambush. During the excitement a daring onlooker went up to one of the snipers who seemed to be a poor marksman. He took the man's gun and brought down a soldier, then handed it back to its owner who motioned as if to say, 'No, go on. You're a better shot than I am.”

Edgar Degas

But the stranger said, 'No, I'm not interested in politics.'
Vollard, Degas and others were talking about the revolution of 1847. Somebody remarked to Degas that he must have been quite young at that time. Than Degas start to quote his father.
Source: posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927), p. 40

Men , Home

“Draw all kind of everyday object placed, in such a way that they have in them the life of the man or woman – corsets that have just been removed, for example, and which retain the form of the body. Do a series in aquatint on mourning, different blacks – black veils of deep mourning floating on the face – black gloves – mourning carriages, undertaker’s vehicles – carriages like Venetian gondolas. On smoke – smoker’s smoke, pipes, cigarettes, cigars – smoke from locomotives, from tall factory chimneys, from steam boats, etc. On evening – infinite variety of subjects in cafes, different tones of glass robes reflected in the mirrors. On bakery, bread. Series of baker's boys, seen in the cellar itself or through the basement windows from the street – backs the colour of the pink flour – beautiful curves of dough – still-life's of different breads, large, oval, long, round, etc. Studies in color of the yellows, pinks, grays, whites of bread…… Neither monuments nor houses have ever been done from below, close up as they appear when you walk down the street. [a working note in which Degas planned series of views of modern Paris, the same time when he sketched the backstreet brothels, making graphic unflinching and even his realistic 'pornographic' sketches he called his 'glimpses through the keyhole', in which he also experimented with perspectives]”

Edgar Degas

Quote from Degas' Notebooks; Clarendon Press, Oxford 1976, nos 30 & 34 circa 1877; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 182
quotes, undated

Life , Beauty , Color , Way

“I am busy on a portrait of my self and my aunt and my two cousins, I will show it to you when you get back. I am doing it as if I were doing a picture. I've got to do it well, because I want to leave it as a momento... The older one is really a lovely thing, the younger one has the devil in her as well as the kindness of an angel. I am doing them with their black dresses and little white pinafores which suit them delightfully. I have ideas for the picture's background running through my head. I would like a certain gracefulness with a nobleness of feeling that I don't know how to describe.”

Edgar Degas

Quote in a letter (27 November, 1858) to Degas' friend and painter Gustave Moreau; as quoted in More unpublished Letters of Degas, Theodore Reff, Art Bulletin LI, No. 3., Sept. 1969, pp. 282-283
1855 - 1875

Love , Angels , Feeling , Idea

“Make portraits of people in familiar and typical positions, above all give their faces the same choice of expression one gives their bodies. Thus if laughter is typical for a person, make him laugh – there are, naturally, feelings that one cannot render…”

Edgar Degas

Quote from Degas' Notebook of 1869; as quoted in Impressionism and Post Impressionism 1874 – 1904, 'Sources and Documents', Linda Nochlin, Englewood Cliffs, New Yersey, 1966, p. 62
1855 - 1875

People , Feeling , Nature , Laughter

“I believe Corot painted a tree better that any of us, but still I find him superior in his figures.”

Edgar Degas

Degas in 1883, as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 4
note 5: 20 June 1887, - Corot’s biographer Alfred Robaut https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robaut told this story (1905. Vol. 1. P. 336)
1876 - 1895

Tree , Painting

“An artist is a deception.... an artist is only an artist at certain times, by an effort of will.... the study of nature is a cliché; isn't Manet the living proof? For although he prided himself on slavishly copying nature, he was the most inadequate painter in the world, not making a single brushstroke without reference to the old masters; for instance, he refrained from drawing fingernails because Frans Hals did not draw them.”

Edgar Degas

Quote of Degas, in his talk with the visiting Mallarmé, 1880's; as cited in Berthe Morisot, the first lady of Impressionism, by Margaret Sehnan; Sutton Publishing (ISBN 0 7509 2339 3), 1996, p. 234
1876 - 1895

World , Nature , Effort , Study

“You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.”

Edgar Degas

Il faut avoir une haute idée, non pas de ce qu'on fait, mais de ce qu'on pourra faire un jour; sans quoi ce n'est pas la peine de travailler.
"Mad About Drawing" (p. 64)
posthumous quotes, Degas Dance Drawing' (1935)

“I really have some luggage in my head. If only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things here, there's a bale I should insure at once.”

Edgar Degas

J'ai vraiment, un vrai bagage dans la tête. S'il y avait pour cela, comme il y a partout ici, des compagnies d'assurance, voilà un ballot je ferais assurer de suite.
Quote from a letter to James Tissot, (New Orleans, 1873), as cited in Marilyn Brown, Degas and the Business of Art: A Cotton Office in New Orleans (Penn State Press, 1994)
1855 - 1875

“A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.”

Edgar Degas

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

Truth

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

Edgar Degas

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

Art , Appearance , Time

“I, marry? Oh, I could never bring myself to do it. I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.”

Edgar Degas

"Methods of Work" (p. 64)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Life , Fear

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

Edgar Degas

Le dessin n'est pas la forme, il est la manière de voir la forme.
"Drawing Is Not the Same As Form..." (p. 82)
posthumous quotes, Degas Dance Drawing' (1935)

Way , Drawing