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There is something in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is the essential. You come to Nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir Masterpieces of painting from the National Gallery of Art (1944)

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More quotes by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination, will be the greatest!

Giles Auty (1977)

People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.

They've found fault with me enough, in all conscience, for putting violet shadows on bodies.

One morning one of us had run out of black; and that was the birth of Impressionism.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.