Quotes from Pierre-Auguste Renoir

In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known.

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

White does not exist in nature.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.

To be an artist you must learn the laws of nature.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

God, the king of artists, was clumsy.

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.

I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.

Religion is everywhere. It is in the mind, in the heart, in the love you put into what you do.

I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that.

An artist must eat sparingly and give up a normal way of life.

There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.

One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

I've spent my life making blunders.

Paint with joy - with the same joy that you would make love to a woman.

It's with my brush that I make love.

They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph.

People love to be nice, but you must give them the chance.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.