Quotes from Edgar Degas

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.

Even in front of nature one must compose.

One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

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

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.

A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

One does not marry art. One ravishes it.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

A picture is something which requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime. Paint falsely, and then add the accent of nature.

Some forms of success are indistinguishable from panic.

Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

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

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.