Paul Cézanne

Visual Arts French 1839 – 1906 99 quotes

A Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century.

Quotes by Paul Cézanne

I want to make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1905

Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, all in proper perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

Art is a harmony parallel to nature.

Letter to Joachim Gasquet 1904

The artist must see with his own eyes, he must be himself.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1905

One does not paint with logic, but with feeling.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The sun, for example, cannot be reproduced, but it must be represented by something else, by color.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am the primitive of the way I have discovered.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1905

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness.

Letter to Joachim Gasquet 1904

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among a great number of relations.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I have not realized my sensation.

Last words, reported by his son 1906

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The world is not a spectacle, it is a mystery.

Letter to Joachim Gasquet 1904

I am too old to change my habits.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1905

I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex ways.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The only way to do good work is to love what you do.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I have never made a pact with the devil.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

One must study nature and paint from it.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am seeking to realize my sensations.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904