Eugene Delacroix Quotes
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I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal.
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Take hold of objects by their centres, not by their lines of contour... The contour accentuated uniformly and beyond proportion, destroys plasticity, bringing forward those parts of an object which are always most distant from the eye - namely its outlines.
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It is only possible to speak in the language and in the spirit of one's time.
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Glory to that Homer of painting, to that father of warmth and enthusiasm... he really paints men.
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What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
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Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.
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One should not be too difficult. An artist should not treat himself like an enemy.
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A taste for simplicity cannot last for long.
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Every time I await a model, even when I am most pressed to time, I am overjoyed when the time comes and I tremble when I hear the key turn in the door.
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The only ones who can really benefit by consulting the model are those who can produce their effect without a model.
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When a thing bores you, do not do it.
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The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer.
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Everything is a subject; the subject is yourself. It is within yourself that you must look and not around you... The greatest happiness is to reveal it to others, to study oneself, to paint oneself continually in one's work.
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We work not only to produce, but to give value to time.
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Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.
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Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.
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The artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer takes a picture ... the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view presented seems chosen by chance.
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What is real for me are the illusions I create with my paintings. Everything else is quicksand.
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The source of genius is imagination alone.
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Perfect beauty implies perfect simplicity, a quality that at first sight does not arouse the emotions which we feel before gigantic works, objects whose very disproportion constitutes an element of beauty.
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Real beauty in the arts is eternal and would be accepted at all periods; but it wears the dress of its century: something of that dress clings to it, and woe to the works which appear in periods when the general taste is corrupted.
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Experience alone can give, even to the greatest talent, that confidence in having done all that could be done.
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Experience has two things to teach. The first is that we must correct a great deal and the second, that we must not correct too much.
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The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes.