“One day, while I was painting a landscape in the neighbourhood of Algiers [March 1881] I saw a man approaching who seemed to be dressed in purple and cloth-of-gold... When the traveler reached me, my illusion vanished; my emir was nothing but a flea-bitten beggar. The sun, the divine sun had enriched him with its light... It's always the same in Algeria. The magic of the sun transmutes the palm-trees into gold, the water seems full of diamonds and men become the Kings from the East.”

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, pp. 156-157 : quote, 1881 on the illusion by sunlight, from Renoir et ses amis, Georges Riviere.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One day, while I was painting a landscape in the neighbourhood of Algiers [March 1881] I saw a man approaching who seem…" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir 44
French painter and sculptor 1841–1919

Related quotes

Claude Monet photo

“I am working from morning to evening, brimming with energy.. I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is! In order to paint here, one would need gold and precious stones. It is quite remarkable.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in a letter from Cote d'Azure to sculptor and friend Auguste Rodin, 1 February 1888; as cited in R. Gordon and A. Forge (1983), Monet, p. 123
1870 - 1890

Chinua Achebe photo

“When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.”

Source: No Longer at Ease (1960), Chapter 10 (p. 95)

John Donne photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“Gold is precious because it resembles the sun. Silver has the light of the moon.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the blind man at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Tanith Lee photo
Gustav Kirchhoff photo

“Look here, I have succeeded at last in fetching some gold from the sun.”

Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887) German physicist

after his banker questioned the value of investigating gold in the Fraunhofer lines of the sun and Kirchhoff handing him over a medal he was awarded for his investigations.
A memoir of Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, by Robert Von Helmholtz, translated by Joseph De Perott, in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Institution (1890), p. 537.

Harriet Tubman photo

“I looked at my hands, to see if I was de same person now I was free. Dere was such a glory over everything, de sun came like gold trou de trees, and over de fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

On realizing that she had passed out of the slavery states into the northern states
Modernized rendition: I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)

Faiz Ahmad Faiz photo
Meng Haoran photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo

“That he, in his developed manhood, stood
A little sunburnt by the glare of life;
While I.. it seemed no sun had shone on me.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Bk. IV, l. 1139-1141.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Related topics