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"Try to explain to Monsieur Renoir that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with those purplish green stains with denote a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse."
Albert Wolf on Renoir's Nude in Sunlight.

"There was a half-length nude picture of a girl. How the rotund fresh breasts palpitate in the light. Such a glorious glow of whiteness was never observed before."
George Moore on Renoir's Nude in Sunlight.

"Young people today who prefer the later works of Degas and Renoir hardly realize how much of its looser character was due to their failing sight."
William Rothenstein.

"Morisot seems to paint with her nerves on edge, providing a few scanty traces to create complete, disquieting evocations."
Octave Mirbeau

"There isn't a single person or landscape or subject which doesn't possess some interest, although it may not be immediately apparent. When a painter discovers this hidden treasure, other people are immediately struck by its beauty. "
Pierre Auguste Renoir

"Don't paint bit by bit, but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere, with brushstrokes of the right colour and value, while noticing what is alongside. Use small brushstrokes and try to put down your perceptions immediately. The eye should not be fixed on one spot, but should take in everything, while observing the reflections which the colours produce on their surroundings."
Camille Pissaro

"Cover the canvas at the first go, and then work on till you see nothing more to add ... Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression."
Camille Pissaro

"In front of Monet's 20 views of the building, one begins to realize that art, in setting out to express nature with ever growing accuracy, teaches us to look, to perceive, to feel. The stone itself becomes an organic substance, and one can feel it being transformed as one moment in its life succeeds another."
Georges Clemenceau on Monet's series paintings of Rouen Cathedral.

"We are all the subjects of impressions, and some of use seek to convey the impressions to others. In the art of communicating impressions lies the power of generalizing without losing that logical connection of parts to the whole which satisfies the mind."
Camille Pissaro

"The true Impressionist landscape painters are MM Claude Monet, Cézanne, Pissaro and Sisley. Their landscapes, which cease to be confused with each other if you pay a little attention to them, have for me one unpardonable dfect, which is that they reduce trees to a state of disembodied phantoms, depriving the trunks of the branches which constitute their real beauty, just like the limbs of a human body."
Philippe Burty

"The reproach that superficial people formulate against Manet, that whereas once he painted ugliness, now he paints vulgarity, falls harmlessly to the ground, when we recognize the fact that he paints the truth."
Stéphane Mallarmé