110+ Paul Cezanne Quotes (Impressionistic, Post-impressionistic And Still-life)

Paul Cezanne was a French artist who was a leading figure in the Post-Impressionist movement. He was known for his unique use of color and brushstrokes, as well as his innovative approach to composition. His work is credited with inspiring the Cubist art movement of the early 20th century.

Top 10 Paul Cezanne Quotes

1. The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.
2. Time and reflection change the sight little by little 'till we come to understand.
3. The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.
4. Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point.
5. I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.
6. A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.
7. Right now a moment of time is passing by!... We must become that moment.
8. The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature.
9. Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down.
10. Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos.

Paul Cezanne Short Quotes

• We live in a rainbow of chaos.
• Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.
• When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also.
• With an apple I will astonish Paris.
• Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.
• Pleasure must be found in study.
• See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere.
• My nervous system is very much weakened - nothing but painting in oil can keep me going.
• The contour eludes me.
• If I think, I am lost.

Paul Cezanne Famous Quotes And Sayings

See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them. — Paul Cezanne

I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin. — Paul Cezanne

What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations. — Paul Cezanne

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture...we merge in an iridescent chaos. — Paul Cezanne

Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen. — Paul Cezanne

Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left. — Paul Cezanne

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest. — Paul Cezanne

Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas? — Paul Cezanne

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature. — Paul Cezanne

What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature. — Paul Cezanne

Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole's everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution. — Paul Cezanne

The sun penetrates me soundlessly like a distant friend that stirs up my laziness, fertilizes it. We bring forth life. — Paul Cezanne

To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric by looking and working. — Paul Cezanne

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle. — Paul Cezanne

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival. — Paul Cezanne

Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions. — Paul Cezanne

I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant. — Paul Cezanne

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals. — Paul Cezanne

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator. — Paul Cezanne

There is a logic of colors, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the painter should conform. — Paul Cezanne

I should have wished to possess the intellectual equilibrium that characterizes you and permits you to achieve without fail the desired end... Chance has not favoured me with an equal self-assurance, it is the only regret I have about things of this earth. — Paul Cezanne

Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles. — Paul Cezanne

There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art. — Paul Cezanne

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish. — Paul Cezanne

The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations. — Paul Cezanne

Chatter about art is almost always useless. — Paul Cezanne

I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else. — Paul Cezanne

One is neither too scrupulous nor too sincere nor too submissive to nature; but one is more or less master of one's model, and, above all, of the means of expression. — Paul Cezanne

Painting, like any art, comprises a technique, a workmanlike handling of material, but the accuracy of a tone and the fictitious combination of effects depend entirely on the choice made by the artist. — Paul Cezanne

To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity. Pleasure must be found in the studying. — Paul Cezanne

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature. — Paul Cezanne

One had to immerse oneself in one's surroundings and intensely study nature or one's subject to understand how to recreate it. — Paul Cezanne

Time and reflection... modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us. — Paul Cezanne

The strong experience of nature... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work. — Paul Cezanne

The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest. — Paul Cezanne

I advance all of my canvas at one time. — Paul Cezanne

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul. — Paul Cezanne

I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front. — Paul Cezanne

It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away. — Paul Cezanne

There is no model, there is only color. — Paul Cezanne

Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes. When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also — Paul Cezanne

It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive. — Paul Cezanne

I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it. — Paul Cezanne

Nature is the best instructor. — Paul Cezanne

Painting is founded on the heart controlled by the head. — Paul Cezanne

You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot. — Paul Cezanne

It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too — Paul Cezanne

A puny body weakens the soul. — Paul Cezanne

Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think. — Paul Cezanne

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one's own strength makes one modest. — Paul Cezanne

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world. — Paul Cezanne

Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. — Paul Cezanne

If I think, everything is lost. — Paul Cezanne

When I start thinking, all is lost. — Paul Cezanne

One must see one's model correctly and experience it in the right way; and furthermore express oneself forcibly and with distinction. — Paul Cezanne

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing. — Paul Cezanne

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work. — Paul Cezanne

Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience. — Paul Cezanne

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well. — Paul Cezanne

One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense of art - and this sense is doubtless the horror of the bourgeois. — Paul Cezanne

Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist. — Paul Cezanne

Drawing and color are by no means two different things. As you paint, you draw... When color is at its richest, form is at its fullest. — Paul Cezanne

I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration. — Paul Cezanne

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things. — Paul Cezanne

Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything.. ..A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together.. ..but no programme, no instruction in painting.. ..drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting - the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting. — Paul Cezanne

The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness. — Paul Cezanne

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time. — Paul Cezanne

I wish to die painting. — Paul Cezanne

All the theories mess you up inside. — Paul Cezanne

I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth. — Paul Cezanne

I am a pupil of Pissarro. — Paul Cezanne

It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling. — Paul Cezanne

May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air. — Paul Cezanne

You have to hurry up if you want to see something, everything disappears. — Paul Cezanne

All my compatriots are asses compared to me. — Paul Cezanne

Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye! — Paul Cezanne

It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture. — Paul Cezanne

I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you. — Paul Cezanne

An optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quartertone, the surfaces represented by colour sensations. So that light does not exist for the painter. — Paul Cezanne

All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside. — Paul Cezanne

Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them ... one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us ... an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace ... loose conciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them. — Paul Cezanne

Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine. — Paul Cezanne

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity. — Paul Cezanne

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships. — Paul Cezanne

The painter unfolds that which has not been seen. — Paul Cezanne

There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones. — Paul Cezanne

When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one! — Paul Cezanne

In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her. — Paul Cezanne

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it. — Paul Cezanne

Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know. — Paul Cezanne

Life Lessons by Paul Cezanne

1. Paul Cezanne's life and work exemplify the importance of dedication and hard work to achieving success. He was a master of his craft, and his perseverance in the face of adversity is an inspiring example of what can be accomplished with dedication and focus.
2. Cezanne also taught us the importance of experimentation and of pushing the boundaries of what is possible. He was a pioneer in his field, and his willingness to take risks and explore new ideas is a reminder to always keep an open mind and to never be afraid to try something new.
3. Lastly, Cezanne's life and work also demonstrate the importance of finding joy in the creative process. He was passionate about his art, and his dedication to his craft was driven by his love of