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You can't ask a man to talk sensibly about the art of painting if he simply doesn't know anything about it. But by God, how can he [ Zola, his childhood friend who characterized Cezanne in L'Oeuvre] dare to say that a painter is done because he has painted one bad picture? When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one.

— Paul Cézanne

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More quotes by Paul Cézanne

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.

Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realizing sensations.

Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations (1897)

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

Everybody's going crazy over the Impressionists; what art needs is a Poussin made over according to nature. There you have it in a nutshell.

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Attribution

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