What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.

Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.

My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? . . . I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.