Edouard Manet: Quotes about painting

“He has no talent at all, that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him please to give up painting.”

Edouard Manet

spoken to Claude Monet about Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1874), as quoted by John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, Vol.1 (1961).
1850 - 1875

Boy , Painting

“Get it down quickly, don't worry about the background. Just go for the tonal values. You see? When you look at it, and above all when you see how to render it as you see it, thats is, in such a way that its make the same impression on the viewer as it does on you, you don't look for, you don't see the lines on the paper over there, do you? And then, when you look at the whole thing you don't try to count the scales on the salmon, of course you don't. You see them as little silver pearls against grey and pink – isn't thats right? – look at the pink of the salmon, with the bone appearing white in the centre and then grays, like the shades of mother of pearl. And the grapes, now do you count each? No, of course not. What strikes you is their clear, amber colour and the bloom which models the form by softening it. What you have to decide with the cloth is where the highlights come and then the planes which are not in the direct light. Halftones are for the magasin pittoresque engravers. The folds will come by themselves if you put them in the proper place. Ah! M. Ingres, there's the man! We're all just children. There's the one who knew how to paint materials! Ask Bracquemond [Paris' artist and print-maker]. Above all, keep your colours fresh. [instructing his new protegee, the Spanish young woman-painter Eva Gonzales, circa 1869]”

Edouard Manet

Manet, recorded by Philippe Burty, as cited in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Little Brown 2000, London; p. 52
1850 - 1875

Children , Way , Light , Appearance

“My dear Duret, I went to see Monet yesterday. I found him heart-broken and completely on the rocks. He asked me to find him someone who would take from ten to twenty of his paintings at their choice, for 111 fr. apiece. Shall we do it between us, making 500 fr. each? Naturally, no one, least of all he, must know that it is we who are doing it..”

Edouard Manet

Quote from Manet's letter to the Paris' art-critic Théodore Duret, 1875, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 121
1850 - 1875

Nature , Heart , Painting

“No one knows what it feels like to be constantly insulted [by art-critics in Paris]. It sickens and destroys you... The fools! They've never stopped telling me I'm inconsistent [in his painting style]; they couldn't have said anything more flattering.”

Edouard Manet

quote of Manet, recorded by his friend Antonin Proust in his last years, Manet by Himself, p. 304, as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 241
1876 - 1883

Fools , Art , Feeling , Painting

“The Bellevue air [suburb outside Paris with curative waters] has done me a world of good... But Alas! Naturalist painting is more in disfavor than ever.”

Edouard Manet

quote in a letter to Emile Zola, June 1880; 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. 16 - note 5
Manet had severe rheumatism and visited in 1879 a clinic in the same location, Bellevue, a suburb outside Paris with curative waters
1876 - 1883

World , Water , Painting

“I was painting modern Paris while you were still painting Greek athletes..”

Edouard Manet

quote from The Impressionists at first hand, by Bernard Denvir; Thames and Hudson, London 1991, p. 78
remark to his friend Edgar Degas, (quoted by George Moore circa 1879). Later Degas reacted: 'That Manet, as soon as I started painting dancers, he did them.'
1876 - 1883

Painting

“One must be of one's time and paint what one sees.”

Edouard Manet

As quoted in Encyclopedia of Artists (2000) by William Vaughan and Christopher Ackroyd, p. 28
1876 - 1883

Time , Painting

“So, they'd prefer me to do a nude, would they? Fine I'll do them a nude... I'll redo it [his painted copy of Giorgioni's 'Woman with musicians'], with a transparent atmosphere, like those women over there [women bathing in the river, Summer of 1862]. Then I suppose they'll really tear me to pieces. They'll tell me I'm just copying the Italians now, rather than the Spanish. Ah, well, they can say what they like.”

Edouard Manet

the painting Manet means here became his most famous one: 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe'
Manet's quote to his friend Antonin Proust in 1862, from Manet, Francoise Cachin, Barrie & Jenkins, London 1991, p. 16
1850 - 1875

Women , Tear , Summer , Painting

“You can do plein-air painting indoors, [to his pupil then, Berthe Morisot ] by painting white in the morning, lilac during the day and orange tones in the evening.”

Edouard Manet

quote of Manet, recorded bij Berthe Morisot; in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson Bareau Little Brown 2000, London; p. 303
1850 - 1875

Painting

“That's good advice.... all the more so since I may well be forced to leave it [the painting] at that, as so often happens when the model doesn't come back. That's always been my principal concern, to make sure of getting regular sittings. Whenever I start something, I'm always afraid the model will let me down... They come, they pose, then away they go, telling themselves that he can finish it off on his own. Well no, one can't finish anything on one's own, particularly since one only finishes on the day one starts, and that means starting often and having plenty of days available.”

Edouard Manet

Quote of Manet c. 1880, recorded by Antonin Proust; as quoted in 'The Importance of Manet's Conceptualization in 'Olympia' and 'The Bar at the Folies-Bergère' http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/manet/arthistory_manet.html, by Charles Moffat, on 'The Art History Archive', c. 2001
1876 - 1883

Painting