by Lautrec -

"I am certainly not regenerating French art, but am struggling hard to accomplish something on an unlucky piece of paper which has done me no harm at all, and on which, believe me, I am doing nothing that is good....I hope things will improve eventually; as it is, I am pretty wretched."

"I have tried to depict the true and not the ideal. It is a defect, perhaps, for warts do not find favor in my eyes, and I like to embellish them with playful fur, to round them, and to put a shining end on them. I do not know if you bridle your pen, but when my pencil moves, it is necesary to let it go, or - crash!...nothing more."

"Only the human figure exists; landscape is, and should be, no more than an accessory; the painter exclusively of landscape is nothing but a bore. The sole function of landscape is to heighten the intelligibility of the character of the figure. Corot's greatness is revealed in his figures, likewise that of Millet, Renoir, and of Whistler; when a figure painter executes a landscape he treats it as if it were a face; Degas' landscapes are unparalleled because they are visionary landscapes. Monet's work would have been even greater if he had not abandoned figure-painting."

"These people annoy me. They want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. Look, it is so easy to finish things. I can easily paint you a Bastien-Lepage....Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then."

"I had placed my stick on the table, as I do every evening. It had been specially made to suit my height, to enable me to walk without too much difficulty. As I was standing up, a customer called to me: 'Monsieur, don't forget your pencil.' It was very unkind, but most funny."

"One should drink little...but often."

"I can paint until I'm forty. After that I intend to dry up."

about Lautrec -

"His paintings were entirely painted in absinthe" (Gustave Moreau, Symbolist painter).

"I asked him to come along because I wanted to frighten off anyone who might try to accost me" (La Goulue, on spending the day in Lautrec's company in the Bois de Boulogne).

"He did not overturn reality to discover truth, where there was nothing. He contented himself with looking. He did not see, as many do, what we seem to be, but what we are. Then, with a sureness of hand and a boldness at once sensitive and firm, he revealed us to ourselves....fixed forever by the artist's pitiless pencil" (obituary in the Journal de Paris).

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