Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose innovative style bridged 19th-century Impressionism with 20th-century modernism. Born in Aix-en-Provence, France, Cézanne’s exploration of form, color, and perspective revolutionized art. His use of geometric shapes and color patches laid the groundwork for Cubism and Fauvism.

Cézanne’s landscapes, still lifes, and portraits depicted scenes from his native Provence, characterized by bold colors and distinctive brushwork. His meticulous studies of nature and emphasis on structure anticipated modernist movements.

Initially facing rejection, Cézanne’s work eventually gained acclaim. He is now celebrated as one of the most important figures in Western art history, his legacy enduring as a pioneer of modern art and a master of visual perception.

Paul Cézanne Quotes

1. “Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder.”
— Paul Cézanne

2. “Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn’t it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.”
— Paul Cézanne

3. “Everything is about to disappear. You’ve got to hurry up if you still want to see things.”
— Paul Cézanne

4. “Art is a harmony parallel with nature.”
— Paul Cézanne

5. “Time and reflection change the sight little by little ’till we come to understand.”
— Paul Cézanne

6. “Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish.”
— Paul Cézanne

7. “If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.”
— Paul Cézanne

8. “The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.”
— Paul Cézanne

9. “The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.”
— Paul Cézanne

10. “I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.”
— Paul Cézanne

11. “Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point.”
— Paul Cézanne

12. “The world doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand the world, that’s why I’ve withdrawn from it.”
— Paul Cézanne

13. “You have to hurry up if you want to see something, everything disappears.”
— Paul Cézanne

14. “The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.”
— Paul Cézanne

15. “There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art.”
— Paul Cézanne

16. “If I think, everything is lost.”
— Paul Cézanne

17. “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”
— Paul Cézanne

18. “Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see.”
— Paul Cézanne

19. “There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones.”
— Paul Cézanne

20. “See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere.”
— Paul Cézanne

21. “One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.”
— Paul Cézanne

22. “To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships.”
— Paul Cézanne

23. “Nature is the best instructor.”
— Paul Cézanne

24. “Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!”
— Paul Cézanne

25. “Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.”
— Paul Cézanne

26. “The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”
— Paul Cézanne

27. “I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you.”
— Paul Cézanne

28. “Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos…”
— Paul Cézanne

29. “It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.”
— Paul Cézanne

30. “Shadow is a colour as light is, but less brilliant; light and shadow are only the relation of two tones.”
— Paul Cézanne

31. “Tell me, do you think I’m going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know.”
— Paul Cézanne

32. “It’s not just about looking and copying, it’s about feeling too.”
— Paul Cézanne

33. “With an apple I will astonish Paris.”
— Paul Cézanne

34. “The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature.”
— Paul Cézanne

35. “Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.”
— Paul Cézanne

36. “The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.”
— Paul Cézanne

37. “Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down.”
— Paul Cézanne

38. “The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.”
— Paul Cézanne

39. “When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also.”
— Paul Cézanne

40. “There is a logic of colors, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the painter should conform.”
— Paul Cézanne

41. “It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive.”
— Paul Cézanne

42. “It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture…”
— Paul Cézanne

43. “Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole’s everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution.”
— Paul Cézanne

44. “What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations.”
— Paul Cézanne

45. “For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.”
— Paul Cézanne

46. “An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all.”
— Paul Cézanne

47. “You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.”
— Paul Cézanne

48. “The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.”
— Paul Cézanne

49. “Art first of all is optical. That’s where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think.”
— Paul Cézanne

50. “Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions.”
— Paul Cézanne

51. “When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.”
— Paul Cézanne

52. “Chatter about art is almost always useless.”
— Paul Cézanne

53. “In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her.”
— Paul Cézanne

54. “There is no model, there is only color.”
— Paul Cézanne

55. “I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion.”
— Paul Cézanne

56. “I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.”
— Paul Cézanne

57. “Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine.”
— Paul Cézanne

58. “The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one’s own strength makes one modest.”
— Paul Cézanne

59. “I am the primitive of the method I have invented.”
— Paul Cézanne

60. “I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it.”
— Paul Cézanne

61. “I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.”
— Paul Cézanne

62. “You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.”
— Paul Cézanne

63. “A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I’m every inch a painter.”
— Paul Cézanne

64. “Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience.”
— Paul Cézanne

65. “If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.”
— Paul Cézanne

66. “Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.”
— Paul Cézanne

67. “Keep good company – that is, go to the Louvre.”
— Paul Cézanne

68. “Genius is the ability to renew one’s emotions in daily experience.”
— Paul Cézanne

69. “Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left.”
— Paul Cézanne

70. “The contour eludes me.”
— Paul Cézanne

71. “There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.”
— Paul Cézanne

72. “Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it’s richest, form is at its fullest.”
— Paul Cézanne

73. “I allow no one to touch me.”
— Paul Cézanne

74. “If you see a red tree, paint it bright red.”
— Paul Cézanne

75. “Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.”
— Paul Cézanne

76. “Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.”
— Paul Cézanne

77. “See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them.”
— Paul Cézanne

78. “I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else.”
— Paul Cézanne

79. “One is neither too scrupulous nor too sincere nor too submissive to nature; but one is more or less master of one’s model, and, above all, of the means of expression.”
— Paul Cézanne

80. “Here, on the river’s verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.”
— Paul Cézanne

81. “Don’t be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.”
— Paul Cézanne

82. “A puny body weakens the soul.”
— Paul Cézanne

83. “All pictures painted inside in the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.”
— Paul Cézanne

84. “One had to immerse oneself in one’s surroundings and intensely study nature or one’s subject to understand how to recreate it.”
— Paul Cézanne

85. “I want to die painting.”
— Paul Cézanne

86. “I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front.”
— Paul Cézanne

87. “I’ll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs.”
— Paul Cézanne

88. “Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one’s own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles.”
— Paul Cézanne

89. “One must see one’s model correctly and experience it in the right way; and furthermore express oneself forcibly and with distinction.”
— Paul Cézanne

90. “Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.”
— Paul Cézanne

91. “To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric by looking and working.”
— Paul Cézanne

92. “Painting, like any art, comprises a technique, a workmanlike handling of material, but the accuracy of a tone and the fictitious combination of effects depend entirely on the choice made by the artist.”
— Paul Cézanne

93. “What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature.”
— Paul Cézanne

94. “All my compatriots are asses compared to me.”
— Paul Cézanne

95. “I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.”
— Paul Cézanne

96. “The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes a painting to deviate from its true path – the concrete study of nature – to lose itself all too long in intangible speculations.”
— Paul Cézanne

97. “The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest.”
— Paul Cézanne

98. “Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival.”
— Paul Cézanne

99. “I paint as if I were Rothschild.”
— Paul Cézanne

100. “An optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quartertone, the surfaces represented by colour sensations. So that light does not exist for the painter.”
— Paul Cézanne

101. “The sun penetrates me soundlessly like a distant friend that stirs up my laziness, fertilizes it. We bring forth life.”
— Paul Cézanne

102. “Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas?”
— Paul Cézanne

103. “It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away.”
— Paul Cézanne

104. “We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.”
— Paul Cézanne

105. “The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings.”
— Paul Cézanne

106. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not really possible to help others.”
— Paul Cézanne

107. “I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.”
— Paul Cézanne

108. “Painting is founded on the heart controlled by the head.”
— Paul Cézanne

109. “To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity. Pleasure must be found in the studying.”
— Paul Cézanne

110. “I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.”
— Paul Cézanne

111. “People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.”
— Paul Cézanne

112. “It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling.”
— Paul Cézanne

113. “You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot.”
— Paul Cézanne

114. “Pleasure must be found in study.”
— Paul Cézanne

115. “I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth.”
— Paul Cézanne

116. “Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?”
— Paul Cézanne

117. “I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.”
— Paul Cézanne

118. “Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.”
— Paul Cézanne

119. “Painting is damned difficult – you always think you’ve got it, but you haven’t.”
— Paul Cézanne

120. “I am a pupil of Pissarro.”
— Paul Cézanne

121. “The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.”
— Paul Cézanne

122. “I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.”
— Paul Cézanne

123. “Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.”
— Paul Cézanne

124. “My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I’ve been pursuing all my life.”
— Paul Cézanne

125. “I advance all of my canvas at one time.”

— Paul Cézanne

126. “The painter unfolds that which has not been seen.”
— Paul Cézanne

127. “When a picture isn’t realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one!”
— Paul Cézanne

128. “All the theories mess you up inside.”
— Paul Cézanne

129. “Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist.”
— Paul Cézanne

130. “One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense of art – and this sense is doubtless the horror of the bourgeois.”
— Paul Cézanne

131. “With a painter’s temperament, all that’s needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.”
— Paul Cézanne

132. “Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?”
— Paul Cézanne

133. “Two sittings a day of my models and I’m totally exhausted.”
— Paul Cézanne

134. “My nervous system is very much weakened – nothing but painting in oil can keep me going.”
— Paul Cézanne

135. “My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me.”
— Paul Cézanne

136. “Pure drawing is an abstraction.”
— Paul Cézanne