The Artist's Share

"Renoir painted Renoirs first and foremost. He often had models with dull complexions, not pearly, and he painted them pearly. He used the model for a movement, a shape, but he did not copy, he never lost the idea of what he could do.

"One day I was out walking with him and he said, 'Bonnard, one must embellish.' By 'embellish' he meant the share the artist has to bring to his picture in the first place."

-- French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867--1947), in Conversation with Angèle Lamotte (1943), quoted in Letters of the Great Artists, p245