124 Quotes by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

It's with my brush that I make love.

What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.

I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable…. But I don’t seem to have a single real friend!

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

There’s nothing more absurd than a “connoisseur.