Auguste Renoir citations

Pierre-Auguste Renoir dit Auguste Renoir, né à Limoges le 25 février 1841 et mort au domaine des Collettes à Cagnes-sur-Mer le 3 décembre 1919, est l'un des plus célèbres peintres français.

Membre à part entière du groupe impressionniste, il évolue dans les années 1880 vers un style plus réaliste sous l'influence de Raphaël. Il a été peintre de nus, de portraits, paysages, marines, natures mortes et scènes de genre. Il a aussi été pastelliste, graveur, lithographe, sculpteur et dessinateur.

Peintre figuratif plus intéressé par la peinture de portraits et de nus féminins que par celle des paysages, il a élaboré une façon de peindre originale, qui transcende ses premières influences .

Pendant environ soixante ans, le peintre estime avoir réalisé à peu près quatre mille tableaux,. Wikipedia  

✵ 25. février 1841 – 3. décembre 1919   •   Autres noms Пьер Огюст Ренуар
Auguste Renoir photo
Auguste Renoir: 44   citations 0   J'aime

Auguste Renoir: Citations en anglais

“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.”

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 150 : a quote from Vollard's book

“For me, a painting must be a pleasant thing, joyous and pretty - yes, pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to fabricate still more.”

As quoted in: Faber Birren (1965) History of color in painting: with new principles of color expression. p. 284-5
Alternative translation:
To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.
As quoted in Luncheon of the Boating Party‎ (2007) by Susan Vreeland
undated quotes

“The pain passes but the beauty remains.”

As quoted in: Instituto Nacional de Previsión (Spain) (1974). 6.o Congreso Internacional de Medicina Fisica: 2-6 julio 1974. p. 424
Renoir replied to Matisse, who had asked him why he persisted in painting at the expense of such torture.
undated quotes

“You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.”

(before 1880) As quoted in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 176
undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975

“People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.”

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 64 : Renoir's remark to Vollard referring to the Impressionist artists's Monet, Sisley and Pissarro.

“About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse”

Benicka (1980) commented:
The frescoes of Raphael and the Pompeian murals that he saw there definitely confirmed what Renoir had begun to feel about his own art; that it was becoming too amorphous in character and was weak in design.
undated quotes
Source: ‎'‎'Renoir‎'‎', by A. Vollard, Paris, 1920, p. 135; as quoted in: Corinne Benicka (1980) Great modern masters. p. 130;

“What a charming girl! And what a skin! She positively radiated light around her.”

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 150 : Recalling the model Jeanne Samary.

“What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.”

Quoted in: Charles Altieri (1989) Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry, p. 169: Talking about the movement of Impressionism.
undated quotes

“They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir livre Renoir

Quoted in [2001, Jean Renoir, Renoir: My Father, New York Review of Books, New York, 9780940322776, https://books.google.com/books?id=RR8Mk2QrvyoC&pg=PA137, 137]
undated quotes

“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 away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.”

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 176 : to Vollard. Renoir was referring to two of his landscapes, painted in the open air, having a different look in the studio light.

“I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.”

Tibballs Geoff, ‎Geoff Tibballs (2012) The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes, p. 80
undated quotes

Auteurs similaires

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Vincent Van Gogh 11
peintre néerlandais
Jules Renard photo
Jules Renard 24
écrivain français
Charles Baudelaire photo
Charles Baudelaire 161
poète français
Claude Debussy photo
Claude Debussy 17
compositeur français
Guy de Maupassant photo
Guy de Maupassant 79
écrivain français
Gustave Flaubert photo
Gustave Flaubert 109
romancier et auteur dramatique français
Stendhal photo
Stendhal 51
écrivain français
Arthur Rimbaud photo
Arthur Rimbaud 64
poète français
Jules Verne photo
Jules Verne 55
romancier français
Émile Durkheim photo
Émile Durkheim 13
sociologue français