“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Quoted in: Peter Erskine, Rick Mattingly (1998), Drum Perspective, p. 73.
Alternative forms:
"At eight, I was Raphael", he used to say. "It took me a whole lifetime to paint like a child"
From Picasso, my grandfather, Marina Picasso (2001).
Attributed from posthumous publications
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Pablo Picasso 128
Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stag… 1881–1973Related quotes

“The most perfect art was Greek art. Raphael is the greatest of all masters in painting.”
Such were the doctrines of every art teacher only twenty or thirty years ago.
1.
1900 - 1920, On Primitive Art – Emil Nolde, 1912

Quoted in: 'Karel Appel, Dutch Expressionist Painter, Dies at 85', by Margalit Fox, in 'Art & Design', New York Times May 9, 2006
Quote of an oral history in 'Contemporary Artists' - Karel Appel describes the wild artistic urgency that gave rise to the Cobra artist-group

“[four years younger! ], you better paint houses, you better focus yourself on townscapes.”
(translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout:) Jonge Bart [vier jaar jonger!], je mot liever huize schilderen, leg je liever toe op stadsgezigtjes.
short quote of Schelfhout, c. 1814; as cited in 'Van IJs naar Sneeuw - De ontwikkeling van het wintergezicht in de 19de eeuw', by Arsine Nazarian, July 2008 Utrecht Student-number: 03609533.8
Schelfhout was the four years older nephew of the painter and gave him this advice

“I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me... Painting is silence.”
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
lightly edited
Other sources

Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 207
1961 - 1980