Camille Pissarro quotes - page 3

Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist painter and a key figure in the development of modern art. His work is renowned for its innovative use of light and color, as well as his depictions of rural and urban French life. He influenced many fellow artists and remains celebrated as a founding father of Impressionism. Here are 66 of his quotes:

Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.

Camille Pissarro

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.

Camille Pissarro

I regard it as a waste of time to think only of selling: one forgets one's art and exaggerates one's value.

Camille Pissarro

Paint the essential character of things.

Camille Pissarro

I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty - but only vaguely.

Camille Pissarro

Don't be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes.

Camille Pissarro

At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it.

Camille Pissarro

Bracquemond tells me that he looked attentively at my works at our exhibition. Far from objecting to them, as I expected, he said they were compactly drawn, and modeled, but he is shocked by the dots; he enjoined me to stick to divisionism but not to use the dot.

Camille Pissarro

Durand likes my paintings, but not the style of execution. His son, the one who went to New York with him, saw them but has not said a word to me.

Camille Pissarro

I have just concluded my series of paintings, I look at them constantly. I who made them often find them horrible. I understand them only at rare moments, when I have forgotten all about them, on days when I feel kindly disposed and indulgent to their poor maker. Sometimes I am horribly afraid to turn round canvases which I have piled against the wall; I am constantly afraid of finding monsters where I believed there were precious gems!... Thus it does not astonish me that the critics in London relegate me to the lowest rank. Alas! I fear that they are only too justified!

Camille Pissarro

I am hard at work, at least I work as much as the weather permits.

Camille Pissarro

Here I have been able to make some good spring studies in oils, and managed to finish my 'Cow-girl' and my 'seared Woman', and my 'London Park', Primrose Hill. I think these pictures have improved a great deal from the point of view of unity. How different from the studies! I am more than ever in favour of taking one's impression from memory; it is less the actual thing - vulgarity disappears, leaving only an aura of truth glimpsed, sensed. To think that this is not understood, so that my anxiety for the future continues as before, despite the success of the exhibition. – I have no news from Paris about my collectors.

Camille Pissarro

Durand likes my paintings, but not the style of execution. His son, the one who went to New York with him, saw them but has not said a word to me. - Durand prefers the old execution, however he grants that my recent paintings have more light - in short, he isn't very keen. My 'Grey Weather' doesn't please him; his son and Caseburne [Durand's cashier] also dislike it.. .It appears that the subject is unpopular. They object to the red roof and backyard just what gave character to the painting which has the stamp of a modern primitive, and they dislike the brick houses, precisely what inspired me..

Camille Pissarro

Sisley, I hear, is seriously ill. He is a great and beautiful artist, in my opinion he is a master equal to the greatest. I have seen works of his of rare amplitude and beauty, among others an 'Inundation' [in the Camondo collection], which is a masterpiece.

Camille Pissarro