Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres quotes:

Drawing includes three and a half quarters of the content of painting... Drawing contains everything, except the hue

There is true color, there is nature without exaggeration, without forced brilliance! He is exact.

Drawing is the honesty of art.

The exhibition has now become no more than a bazaar where mediocrity spreads itself out with impudence. The exhibitions are useless and dangerous... they ought to be abolished.

Do not concern yourself with other people. Concern yourself with your own work alone.

Muscles I know; they are my friends. But I have forgotten their names.

The way good inventions are made is to familiarize yourself with those of others. The men who cultivate letters and the arts are all sons of Homer.

Better gray than garishness.

A painter can turn pennies into gold, for all subjects are capable of being transformed into poems.

Fine and delicate taste is the fruit of education and experience.

Draw lines - draw a lot of lines

Drawing is the probity of art. To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours; drawing does not consist merely of line: drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane, the modeling. See what remains after that.

It takes 25 years to learn to draw, one hour to learn to paint.

What do these so-called artists mean when they preach the discovery of the'new'? Is there anything new? Everything has been done, everything has been discovered.

The chief consideration for a good painter is to think out the whole of his picture, to have it in his head as a whole... so that he may then execute it with warmth and as if the entire thing were done at the same time.

To draw does not simply mean to reproduce contours; the drawing does not simply consist in the idea: the drawing is even the expression, the interior form, the plan, the model. Look what remains after that! The drawing is three fourths and a half of what constitutes painting. If I had to put a sign over my door to the atelier, I would write: School of drawing, and I'm certain that I would create painters.

Make copies, young man, many copies. You can only become a good artist by copying the masters.

Is there anyone among the great men who has not imitated? Nothing is made with nothing.

You have to observe flowers in order to find the right tones for the folds of clothes.

As long as you do not hold a balance between your seeing of things and your execution, you will do nothing that is really good.