“.. and then it remains you to re-create your study, the fragment, into a painting. For remember; these are two [different] things: Nature is the material from which we must take. But don't be fooled by the modern theories, that imitating, copying nature would be 'everything'. The goal, the Art's aim is …. to move..”

— Willem Roelofs

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) ..en dan blijft u over, om de studie, het fragment, tot schilderij te herscheppen. Want vergeet niet, dat dat twee [verschillende] dingen zijn: De natuur is de stof, waaruit wij moeten putten. Maar laat u niet door de moderne (Jeltes: hij bedoelde hier waarschijnlijk de Belgische neo-impressionistische) theoriën wijsmaken, dat het navolgen, het copieeren der natuur 'alles' is. Het doel, het streven van de Kunst is.. ..te ontroeren..
Quote of Roelofs, in a letter to his pupil Frans Smissaert, 8 June 1886; as cited in Willem Roelofs (1822—1922), by Mr. H. F. W. Jeltes, in Maandschrift Elsevierweekblad... http://maandschrift.elsevierweekblad.nl/EGM/1922/01/19220101/EGM-19220101-0268/story.pdf, Jan. 1922, p. 222
1880's

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Willem Roelofs 32

Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897) 1822–1897

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“They speak of naturalism in opposition to modern painting. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. Velasquez left us his idea of the people of his epoch. Undoubtedly they were different from what he painted them, but we cannot conceive a Philip IV in any other way than the one Velasquez painted…”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 312
Quotes, 1920's

“Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), pp. 5 & 22: Gauguin is advising a fellow painter, 1885

“There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

XI, 10
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book XI

“Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 1: "The Creative Mind", §9 (p. 20)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

“I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 22: quote in a letter to Ambroise Vollard, 1900

“Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realizing sensations.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 46, in: 'What I know or have seen of his life'

“Be sure, from nature never to depart;
To copy nature is the task of art.”
Praeterea haud lateat te nil conarier artem, Naturam nisi ut assimulet, propiusque sequatur. Hanc unam vates sibi proposuere magistram: Quicquid agunt, hujus semper vestigia servant.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book II, line 455
De Arte Poetica (1527)
Context: Be sure, from nature never to depart;
To copy nature is the task of art.
The noblest poets own her sovereign sway,
And ever follow where she leads the way.

“I believe that new art must differ totally in its manifestation from art as we know it, and people may be very reluctant to accept this. It is perhaps true to say, as someone did of cubism, that 'To sum up: since art is a need to create rather than imitate, the 'cubists' rousing themselves from the sentimentality born of the picturesque aspect of some natural spectacle or other, disengage the fleeting aspects from those which are constant and absolute, and with the aid of these two elements, construct a reality equivalent to that which they see before them'. Thus it is a question of finding the true equivalence (that, offered by Cubism is still not true equivalence), and this can only be 'that which is not nature at all, and is nonetheless one with nature”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

like in Neo-Plasticism / De Stijl
Quote in Mondrian's letter to Lodewijk van Deyssel (who reacted as Dutch art critic on Mondrians essay: 'Le Néo-plasticisme'] Paris, February 1921; as cited in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 136
1920's

“I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of "art for art's sake". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

1840s - 1850s, Realist Manifesto', 1851/1855

“Fools talk of imitation and copying, all is imitation.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote of Gainsborough in a Letter to John Henderson, 27th June 1773
1770 - 1788

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