Eugene Delacroix
Eugene Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroixwas a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth26 April 1798
imagination looks constructs
Even when we look at nature, our imagination constructs the picture.
sight perfect simplicity
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.
memories ideas drawing
The living model never answers well the idea or impressions the painter wishes to express; one must, therefore, learn to do without one, and for that, you must acquire facility, furnish one's memory to the point of infinitude, and make numerous drawings after the old masters.
photography way
[Photography is] in some ways false just because it is so exact.
benefits produce consulting
The only ones who can really benefit by consulting the model are those who can produce their effect without a model.
notebook artist essence
It is often we come the closest to the essence of an artist... in his or her pocket notebooks and travel sketchbooks... where written comments and personal notes provide an intimate insight into the magical mind of a working artist.
bores-you boredom bores
When a thing bores you, do not do it.
marriage blessing wife
A wife of your own stature is the greatest of all blessings.
race wings soul
I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal. He it is who notes that individuality which is the seal of the weakness of our race. My soul has wings, but the brutal jailer is strict.
writing long mind
I am carrying out my plan, so long formulated, of keeping a journal. What I most keenly wish is not to forget that I am writing for myself alone. Thus I shall always tell the truth, I hope, and thus I shall improve myself. These pages will reproach me for my changes of mind.
beauty looks taste
Of which beauty will you speak? There are many: there are a thousand: there is one for every look, for every spirit, adapted to each taste, to each particular constitution.
beauty sovereign conventions
What makes sovereign ugliness are our conventions.
artist enemy should
One should not be too difficult. An artist should not treat himself like an enemy.
different would-be actors
If painters left nothing of themselves after their deaths, so that we were obliged to rank them as we do actors according to the judgment of their contemporaries, how different their reputations would be from what posterity has made them!