Eugène Delacroix citations (51 citations, Page 2)

Eugène Delacroix: 51 citations0 J'aime

Eugène Delacroix Citations

“Les artistes qui cherchent la perfection en tout sont ceux qui ne peuvent l'atteindre en aucune partie.”

1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Eugène Delacroix: Citations en anglais

“The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvellously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life.”

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Eugène Delacroix

19 January 1847 (p. 55)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“Of late, men seem to have been possessed by an incomprehensible impulse to strip themselves of everything with which nature has endowed them in order to make them superior to the beasts of burden. A philosopher is a gentleman who sits down four times a day to the best meals he can possibly obtain, and who considers that virtue, glory and noble sentiments should be indulged in only when they do not interfere with those four indispensable functions and all the rest of his little personal comforts. At this rate, a mule is a better philosopher by far, because in addition to all this he puts up with blows and hardship without complaint.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote, 29 April 1824 (p. 35)
1815 - 1830, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1822 – 1824)

“I believe it safe to say that all progress must lead, not to further progress, but finally to the negation of progress, a return to the point of departure.”

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Eugène Delacroix

23 April 1849 (p. 97)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“One should always be desiring or hoping for something. When one can hope for that which one desires, one enjoys the greatest happiness of which our thinking apparatus is capable. To obtain what one has been desiring is the first step to the depths of sadness and even pain, from which one can never emerge. The sea still enchants me; I linger for three or four hours at a time on the jetty or at the edge of the cliffs. Impossible to tear oneself away. If I could lead such a life for a certain time, coupling it with some interesting occupation, I should enjoy excellent health.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote from his letter to Madame de Forget, Dieppe, 13 September 1852; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
Delacroix's quote refers to his stay at the coast at Dieppe
1831 - 1863

“They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.”

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Eugène Delacroix

21 September 1854 (p. 256)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”

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Eugène Delacroix

quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

“For his contemporaries, Racine was a romantic, but for every age he is classical, that is to say, he is faultless.”

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Eugène Delacroix

13 January 1857 (p. 337)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“Proportion applies to sculpture as to painting; perspective determines the contour; chiaroscuro gives relief through the disposition of lights and shadows in their relationship with the background; color gives the appearance of life... The colorists, the men who unite all the phases of painting, have to establish, at once and from the beginning, everything that is proper and essential to their art. They have to mass things in with color, even as the sculptor does with clay, marble or stone; their sketch, like that of the sculptor, must also render proportion, perspective effect, and color.”

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Eugène Delacroix

15 April 1851, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 230 – 231
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?”

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Eugène Delacroix

13 January 1857 (p. 334)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“Criticism, like so many other things, keeps to what has been said before and does not get out of the rut. This business of the 'Beautiful' some see it in curved lines, some in straight lines, but all persist in seeing it as a matter of line. I am now looking out of my window and I can see the most lovely countryside; lines just do not come into my head: the lark is singing, the river sparkles with a thousand diamonds, the leaves are whispering; where, I should like to know, are the lines that produce delicious impressions like these? They refuse to see proportion or harmony except between two lines: all else they regard as chaos, and the dividers alone are judge.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote from a letter to Léon Peisse, 15 July 1949; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 68
this quote refers to Delacroix's refusal to use the line as boundary of the form in his painting art, as a too sharp dividing force in the picture - in contrast to the famous classical painter in Paris then, Ingres
1831 - 1863

“Constable, an admirable man, is one of England's glories. I have already told you about him and about the impression he had made on me when I was making 'The massacre at Chios'. He and Turner were real reformers. They broke out of the rut of traditional landscape painting. Our School [ French Romanticism ], which today abounds in men of talent in this field, profited greatly by their example. Géricault [first leader of French Romanticism, followed by Delacroix after his early death] came back in a daze from seeing one of the great landscapes Constable sent us.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote from Delacroix' letter to Théophile Silvestre, Paris, 31 December 1858; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 352
1831 - 1863

“Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion.”

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Eugène Delacroix

25 January 1857 (p. 345)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“After leaving [the International Exposition in Paris, with a lot of new machines], I went to see Courbet's exhibition; he has reduced the admission to ten cents. I stay there alone for nearly an hour and discover that the picture [ 'L'atélier' / the Painter's Studio - 1855] of his which they refused [for exposing on the official Salon in Paris ] is a masterpiece; I simply could not tear myself away from the sight of it.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 3 August, 1855; as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 236
1831 - 1863

“Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.”

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Eugène Delacroix

13 January 1857 (p. 338)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“He [ Michelangelo ] did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much less to the action of the picture as a whole... Therein lies his great merit; he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated limb.”

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Eugène Delacroix

quote in 1854, on the Italian Renaissance artist [[w:Michelangelo|Michelangelo, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 235
1831 - 1863

“Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.”

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Eugène Delacroix

16 January 1860 (p. 391)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“If you make the light dominate too much, the breadth of the planes leads to the absence of half tints, and consequently to discoloration; the opposite abuse is harmful above all in big compositions destined to be seen from a distance, like ceilings, etc. In the latter form of painting, Paul Veronese goes beyond Rubens through the simplicity of his local color and his breadth in handling the light... Veronese had greatly to strengthen his local color in order that it should not appear discolored when immunized by the very broad light he threw on it.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 1850; as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 230 – 231
1831 - 1863

“Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.”

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Eugène Delacroix

25 January 1857 (p. 346)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“One has to see a painter in his own place to get an idea of his worth. I went back there [to Corot's studio, after the official exhibition] and I appreciate in a new light the paintings that I had seen in the Museum and that had struck me as middling... He told me to go a bit ahead of myself, abandoning myself to whatever might come; this is how he works most of the time... Corot delves deeply into a subject; ideas come to him and he adds while working; it's the right approach.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote from entry of Delacroix's Journal, 14 March, 1847; as cited in Selected writings on Art and Artists, transl. P. E. Charvet – Cambridge University Press, Archive, 1981, p. 150, note 44
This visit of Delacroix was the beginning of an important friendship
1831 - 1863

“In the midst of the activities that distract me [shooting partridges in the woods], when I remember a few lines of poetry, when I recall some sublime painting, my spirit is roused to indignation and spurns the vain sustenance of the common herd. And in the same way, when I think of those I love, my soul clings eagerly to the elusive trace of these cherished ideas. Yes, I am sure of it, great friendship is like great genius, and the remembrance of a great and enduring friendship is like that of great works of genius… What a life would be that of two great poets who loved each other as we do! That would be too great for human kind.”

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Eugène Delacroix

Quote in a letter to his friend J. B. Pierret, 18 September 1818, from the Forest of Boixe; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863”, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 41
1815 - 1830