Men of genius are made not by new ideas, but by an idea which possesses them, namely, that what has been said has not yet been sufficiently said.

It is only possible to speak in the language and in the spirit of one’s time.

The living model never answers well the idea or impressions the painter wishes to express; one must, therefore, learn to do without one, and for that, you must acquire facility, furnish one’s memory to the point of infinitude, and make numerous drawings after the old masters.

One must learn to be grateful for one’s own findings.

I have told myself a hundred times that painting – that is, the material thing called a painting – is no more than a pretext, the bridge between the mind of the painter and the mind of the spectator.

Criticism is like many other things, it drags along after what has already been said and doesn’t get out of its rut.

Give me some mud, and I will paint you a woman’s flesh.

If I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her.

Cold exactitude is not art... The so-called consciousness of the majority of painters is only perfection applied to the art of boring. People like that, if they could, would work with the same minute attention on the back of their canvas.

A picture is nothing but a bridge between the soul of the artist and that of the spectator.