Огюст Ренуар цитаты

„Сегодня людям хочется всё объяснить. Но если можно объяснить картину, значит это уже не искусство.“

„Сегодня у нас у всех талант, разумеется, но что правда, то правда, мы не умеем рисовать руки, и мы не знаем своего ремесла.“

„В искусстве, как и в природе, всякая новизна есть, в сущности, лишь более или менее видоизменённое продолжение прошлого.“

„Они предпочитают объяснить неправильность неумением.“

„Когда я нарисовал низ женщины так, что я хочу прикоснуться к нему, тогда живопись закончена.“

„Искусство не для забавы!“

„Впрочем, нечего и говорить, что я не так наивен, чтобы утверждать, что в искусстве бывают течения абсолютно новые.“

„Но если ремесло основа и опора искусства, то это не всё, есть ещё нечто другое в искусстве древних, что делает его прекрасным, это ясность, никогда нас не утомляющая и внушающая представление о вечности произведения.“

„Сверх ремесла в искусстве необходимо ещё нечто, секрет чего не откроет никакой профессор: тонкость, очарование, а это надо иметь в себе самом.“

„В Париже едва ли пятнадцать коллекционеров произведений искусства, способных понравиться художнику без поддержки Салона. Из них восемьдесят тысяч не купят вещи у художника, которого нет в парижском салоне. Я не собираюсь быть настолько глупым, чтобы осуждать что-либо только из-за того, где это происходит. Короче говоря, я не собираюсь тратить свое время на злобу на Салон - я даже не хочу выглядеть так, как будто делаю. На мой взгляд, нужно просто рисовать так хорошо, как только возможно - и все.“

„Я никогда бы не занялся живописью, не будь у женщин груди.“

„Я не признаю прогресса в живописи, ни в идеях, ни в технике, никакого прогресса!“

„Только владея ремеслом, древние могли достичь этого чудесного вещества живописи и этих ясных красок, секрет которых мы тщетно ищем, боюсь, что теории не помогут нам овладеть этим секретом.“

„Теперь преуспевающий торговец, которому хочется иметь свой портрет, попросту отправляется к фотографу, тем хуже для нас, разумеется, но тем лучше для живописи.“

„И даже изображая, персонажи такими, каковы они есть, художник, обладающий темпераментом живописца, может доставить своей живописью бесконечное удовольствие.“

„Самая искусная рука, всего лишь служанка мысли.“

„Иногда самые значительные веши, открываются последними.“

„Вы обращаетесь к природе с вашими теориями, природа же всё опрокидывает.“

„Мода, всесильная штука, она не позволяет видеть того, что вечно.“

„Только владея ремеслом, можно дать впечатление, что вещь сделана в один приём.“

„Во время работы, я чувствую себя пробкой, которую несёт по волнам, и мне остаётся лишь отдаться на их волю.“

„Важнее всего точно определить то, что ты можешь сделать, и чего нет, никогда не следует ударяться в амбицию.“

„Уж они-то не работали, чтобы выставляться в салоне!“

„Трудное дело скульптура, живописцы ещё изредка встречаются, литераторов и музыкантов, этих хоть лопатой греби.“

„Но чтобы быть скульптором, надо быть святым, надо найти в себе силу не попасться в западню сноровки и, с другой стороны, не оказаться в ловушке ложной безыскусственности.“

„Было бы чересчур большой удачей наперёд угадывать то, что получится.“

„Впрочем, вполне достаточно яблока на краю стола.“

„Очень мило, разумеется, вздыхать по поводу прошлого.“

„Возьмите, например, готическую колоннаду, главный мотив которой капустный лист, и вот вы ни за что не найдёте ни одного листа, который был бы вполне похож на другой и так же рас положен.“

„Чтобы сохраниться в репродукции, надо быть недюжинно сильным.“

„Хорошо время от времени увлечься чем-нибудь, не имеющим отношения к собственному коньку.“

„Я убеждён в том, что картина должна быть приятной, весёлой и привлекательной, да, привлекательной!“

„Я преуспел, как ни один живописец при жизни, отовсюду сыплются почести, художники хвалят мои работы, стольким людям моё положение должно казаться завидным, и я не могу приобрести ни одного настоящего друга!“

“I can manage very well with the first grubby backside [of the model] which comes along – provided I find a skin which takes the light well.”

“.. to express himself well, the artist should be hidden... The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.”

“I am still going through an experimental stage. I'm not happy, and I keep scrubbing out and scrubbing out again. I hope this mania will pass... I'm like the children at school; the clean page has to be filled with good writing, and splash – a mess! I'm still making messes and I'm forty years old.”

“For me, a painting must be a pleasant thing, joyous and pretty - yes, pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to fabricate still more.”

“. Here [ Guernsey ] people bath among the rocks which serve as cabins, since there's nothing else; nothing is more attractive than this mixture of women and men crowded on these rocks. One would belief oneself in a landscape by Watteau rather than in the real world. So I'll have a source of real and graceful motives which I will be able to make use of. Some enchanting bathing-costumes... Nothing is more amusing when one is strolling through these rocks, than to surprise young girls getting ready to bathe... Despite the small number of things that I'll be able to bring back [to Paris], I hope to be able to give you an idea of these charming things.”

“I want to give something [a painting to museum The Luxembourg in Paris, c. 1910] I can't be sure of doing again. I could do ten more nudes like that one [a large nude painting, suggested by Georges Riviere], whenever I liked... This one turned out well. I don't think I'd be able to do that again.”

“If I was accused of neglecting my art, or sacrificing my ideas for the sake of stupid ambition, then I would understand the critics; but as that isn't the case, there is nothing to be said. I sent a picture to the Salon for purely commercial reasons. Anyway, it is like some medicines – even if it does no good, it does no harm.”

“I studied a good deal in the museum at Naples; the Pompeian paintings are extremely interesting from every aspect. So I am staying in the sun – not to paint portraits but while I am warming myself and looking hard at things I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters. Raphael didn't work out-of-doors, but he studied the sunlight all the same – his frescoes are full of it. So, by looking around outside, I have finished by seeing only the broad harmonies, and am no longer preoccupied with the little details, which only extinguish the sunlight, instead of increasing its brilliance. I hope therefore, when I get back to Paris, to produce something which will be the outcome of all these general studies, and to give you the benefit of them”

“Landscapes are useful to a figure painter, too; out-of-doors one uses colours one would never think of in the weaker studio light. But landscape painting is a thankless job; you waste half a day for the sake of one hour's painting. You only finish one painting out of ten, because the weather keeps changing. You start work on a sunlight effect and it comes on to rain – or you had a few clouds in the sky, and the wind blows them away. It's always the same story!”

“The pain passes but the beauty remains.”

“.. I have suddenly become a traveler, and I am afflicted with a fever for seeing Raphael's. So I am in the process of swallowing up Italy. Now, I will be able to say straight out: 'Yes, sir. I have seen some Raphael's, I have seen Venice the Fair, etc.”

“You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.”

“What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples – in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.”

“I wanted to tell you that in about 1883 there occurred a kind of break in my work. I had got to the end of 'Impressionism', and I had come to the conclusion that I didn't either how to paint or how to draw. In short, I had come to a dead end.”

“People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.”

“It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.”

“About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse”

“What a charming girl! And what a skin! She positively radiated light around her.”

“I went to see this picture [Raphael's painting 'Madonna della Sedia' which Renoir saw in Florence in 1882] just to have a good laugh – and I found myself in front of the most wonderfully free, solid, simple, alive painting it is possible to imagine – arms and legs of real flesh, and what a touching expression of maternal tenderness.”

“How wonderful the Doges' palace is! That pink and white marble must have been a bit cold at first, but it was magical for me, seeing it gilded by several centuries of sunlight! And the basilica of San Marco! That was what converted me from those cold Italian Renaissance churches.... as soon as one goes into San Marco one feels one is in a real place of worship – that gentle filtered light and those magnificent mosaics and the great Byzantine Christ with the grey aureole! If one hasn't been in San Marco it is impossible to imagine the beauty of heavy pillars and columns without any moulding!”

“What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.”

“The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater.”

“What wonderful things [Renoir is reacting on Corot's painting 'Interior of Chartres Cathedral' and Delacroix's 'Interior of M. de Mornay’s house', – he saw in 1919 from his wheelchair, in the reopened painting-rooms of the Louvre]. There isn’t a single big picture worth any more than these two little ones... The Director [of the Louvre] was so charming to me. I wish I could have thanked him properly. If you meet him, tell him how much I enjoyed my visit. If I'd presented myself at the Louvre in my wheelchair thirty years ago, they'd have shot me out fast enough! You see, one has to live a long time to see such changes. I've been one of the lucky ones.”

“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.”

“I'm struggling with flowering trees [in Spring 1881, shortly after his Algeria trip] and with women and children. I keep feeling regretful, all the same – I think of all the trouble I have given you for nothing, and I wonder how long you will put up with my womanish whims; and through all I keep seeing those pretty English girls [Duret invited him to visit England]. What a misfortune, always to be so undecided! But it's at the root of my character, and I'm too old to change.”

“Shall I tell you what I have seen in Venice? Right – here goes. Take a boat along the Seine to the Quai des Orfevres, or opposite the Tuileries [Paris] and you will see Venice. For the Museums, go to the Louvre, For Veronese, go to the Louvre,- but not for Tiepolo, whom I didn't know; only it is a bit dear at the price. No – that isn't true; it is very, very beautiful, when the weather is fine. The lagoon and San Marco – splendid; the Doges' palace, splendid. As for the rest, I'd rather have Saint German l'Auxerrois.”

“.. not exactly prostitutes, but a class of unattached young women, characteristic of the Parisian scene before and after the Empire, changing lovers easily, satisfying any whim, going nonchalantly from a mansion in the Champs-Elyseées to a garret in the Batignolles. [describing the place w:Bain à la Grenouillère at Croissy-sur-Seine and the women there, where Renoir together with Monet painted in open air and used them as models in their paintings 'la Grenouillère', 1868-69]”

“Out-of-doors there is a greater variety of light than in the studio, where the light is always the same. But that is just the trouble; one is carried away by the light, and besides, one can't see what one is doing.”

“I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.”