Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas - Remarks to Three Artists

To Berthe Morisot:

The study of nature is unimportant because painting is a conventional art and it would be infinitely better to learn drawing from Holbein.

To Max Liebermann:

I would like to be rich enough to buy back all my pictures and destroy them by pushing my foot through the canvas.

To Bartholome (Naples, January 17, 1886):

How pretty the photographed drawing is that you gave me! But it is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem to be chance, not even movement.

From the Degas manuscripts

Famous Painter - Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

(1834-1917)

Degas's naturalism loas only a temporary concession to the new ideology; basically a classicist, he preferred elegant subjects — especially racing and the world of ballet. Despite his involvement with the Impressionist movement, with its fights and its experiments, he retained a certain upper-class, noncommittal aloofness. He always remained a spectator rather than a participant, victimized by his prejudices, shy, afraid of displays of emotion, an outsider. Keenly analytical, he was the only one among his contemporaries who knew how to capture an instantaneous vision without sacrificing truth.

Rembrandt van Rijn - Letter to Huygens

January 12, 1639 My Lord:

Because of the great zeal and devotion which I experienced in executing well the two pictures which His Highness commissioned me to make—the one being Christ's dead body being laid in the tomb and the other Christ arising from the dead to the great consternation of the guardsf—these same two pictures are now finished through studious application, so that I am now also disposed to deliver the same and so to afford pleasure to His Highness. For, in these two paintings the greatest and most natural movement (or most innate emotion);}: has been expressed, which is also the main reason why they have taken so long to execute.

Until now, these words have been interpreted as "the greatest and most natural movement." H. E. van Gelder, however, pointed out that many 17th-century authors used the word beweeglijkheid to express emotion rather than physical movement. Hence Rembrandt's words should be interpreted as "with the greatest and most innate emotion." Rembrandt wished to convey that he had done his uttermost to express the emotions of the figures in accordance with their character. However, J. Rosenberg (Rembrandt, 1, Cambridge, 1948, pp. 116, 226 note 29) and W. Stechow (Art Bulletin, 32, 1950, 253) do not accept this interpretation. They assert that "the interpretation as an inward emotion seems to be contradicted by the pictures themselves, in which the outer movement in the Baroque sense still dominates, and by the aesthetics of the period."

An unbiased observer will have to admit that the Resurrection is a "turbulent composition with frenzied Baroque movement," but that the Entombment is a composition fraught with inward feeling. Van Gelder has correctly drawn attention to the fact that the spectators—and also in the Resurrection —are moved by an inward emotion. New linguistic research supports van Gelder's theory (L. de Paauw-de Veer, Oud Holland, 74, 1959, 202).

Therefore, I request my Lord to be so kind as to inform His Highness of this, and whether it would please my Lord that the two pictures should first be delivered at your house as was done on the previous occasion. I shall first await a note in answer to this.

And as my Lord has been troubled in these matters for the second

time, a piece lo feet long and 8 feet high shall also be added as

a token of my appreciation, which will be worthy of my Lord's house.

And wishing you all the happiness and heavenly blessings, Amen.

My lord, your humble and obedient servant,

Rembrandt

Painters on Painting - Paolo Veronese

Those painters who have best understood the art of producing a good effect, have adopted one principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason; that a part may be sacrificed for the good of the whole. Thus, whether the masses consist of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact and of a pleasing shape; to this end, some parts may be made darker and some lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant. Paul Veronese took great liberties of this kind. It is said, that being once asked, why certain figures were painted in the shade, as no cause was seen in the picture itself, he turned off the enquiry by answering, "una nuevola che passa," a cloud is passing which has overshadowed them.

Hieronymus Bosch - on His Method of Painting

Hieronymus Bosch

He is not content to paint familiar legends and themes of a common heritage. As he paints, Bosch holds intimate conversation with himself, and gradually he sinks into the depths of his own unconscious. For him, to paint is to liberate his own demon.

ON HIS METHOD OF PAINTING

He had a firm, rapid, and very agreeable execution, often finishing his works at the first painting; yet those works have stood perfectly well, and without changing. Like other old masters, he had a mode of drawing and tracing his subjects on the white panel; he then passed a transparent flesh-colored priming over the design, often using the ground to contribute to the effect of his work.

Painters on Painting - Leonardo da Vinci

If one goes back to the time luhen The Last Supper was executed, one can do no less than wonder at the immense progress that Leonardo caused his art to make. . . . He freed himself with one bloiu from the traditional painting of the fifteenth century; without errors, without weakening, without exaggerations, and as if with a single bound, he arrives at that judicious and learned naturalism, equally separated from servile imitation and from an empty chimerical ideal. How singular it is that the most methodical of men, the one among the masters of this time who was most occupied with the processes of execution and who taught them with such precision that the works of his best pupils are confused luith his own every day — this man, whose manner is so strongly characterized, is without rhetoric.

WHAT PAINTING IS CONCERNED WITH

Painting is concerned with all the ten attributes of sight: darkness and light, solidity and color, form and position, distance and nearness, motion and rest.