15 Eugene Delacroix Quotes on Art

Eugene Delacroix quotes on art

1. The contour should come last, only a very experienced eye can place it rightly.

9. Perfect beauty implies perfect simplicity, a quality that at first sight does not arouse the emotions which we feel before gigantic works, objects whose very disproportion constitutes an element of beauty.

11. Delsarte tells me that Mozart stole outrageously from Galuppi, in the same way, I suppose, that Moliere stole from anybody anywhere, if he found something work taking. I said that what was Mozart had not been stolen from Galuppi, or from anyone else for that matter.

12. We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries.

14. He [ Titian ] is the least mannered and consequently the most varied of artists. Mannered talents have but one bias, one usage only. They are more apt to follow the impulse of the hand than to control it. Those that are less mannered must be more varied, for they continually respond to genuine emotion.

15. 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?

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

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

21. The so-called conscientiousness of the great majority of painters is nothing but perfection laboriously applied to the art of being boring.

22. They say that truth is naked. I cannot admit this for any but abstract truths; in the arts, all truths are produced by methods which show the hand of the artist.

23. 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.

31. Delacroix at Web Gallery of Art

34. Delacroix at Web Museum

35. Delacroix at Artchive

36. Delacroix at CGFA