Pure drawing is an abstraction.
The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.
If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.
To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.
Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!
Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.