Who really said it

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child

Q: Is "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." really by Pablo Picasso?

No. Picasso did say something close to this — but not this. The remark that is actually documented was made to the critic Herbert Read while Picasso was visiting an exhibition of children's drawings, and Read published it in The Times of 27 October 1956: "When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children." It is about drawing, it says many years, and it contains no "four years." The famous "four years … a lifetime to paint like a child" sentence has not been located in any source from Picasso's lifetime; Wikiquote files it among quotes attributed from posthumous publications, its earliest cited printing being a 1998 book about drumming.

Not Picasso’s words — a later paraphrase Pablo Picasso 1881–1973 · Spanish painter, sculptor & co-founder of Cubism

Disputed — the thought is Picasso’s, as reported in 1956; the famous sentence is a later reworking with no source of its own. Rights unconfirmed

Picasso did say something close to this — but not this. The remark that is actually documented was made to the critic Herbert Read while Picasso was visiting an exhibition of children’s drawings, and Read published it in The Times of 27 October 1956: “When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.” ↗ It is about drawing, it says many years, and it contains no “four years.” The famous “four years … a lifetime to paint like a child” sentence has not been located in any source from Picasso’s lifetime; Wikiquote files it among quotes attributed from posthumous publications ↗, its earliest cited printing being a 1998 book about drumming.

Last verified 27 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child” Not Picasso's words. What is documented is a remark he made at an exhibition of children's drawings, reported by Herbert Read in The Times, 27 October 1956, p. 7 (cited variously as Read's article "Picasso at 75" and as a letter from Read to the paper): "When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children." The popular "four years … a lifetime to paint like a child" version has not been found in any source from Picasso's lifetime; the earliest datable printing located is Modern Drummer, 1989. — Quotle.info

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of creativity, growth and simplicity. Theme: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What Picasso is documented as saying

Quote as it circulates: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
What is actually documented: “When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.”
Source of record: Herbert Read in The Times, 27 October 1956, p. 7 — cited variously as his article ‘Picasso at 75’ and, by Oxford Essential Quotations, as a letter from Read to the paper
Earliest datable printing located of the popular wording: Modern Drummer 13 (1989), p. 50; same wording in The Drum Perspective (1998), p. 73

When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children. Reported speech, 1956

Said to Herbert Read while Picasso was visiting an exhibition of children’s drawings. Published renderings differ slightly: Oxford Essential Quotations prints ↗ “… it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children,” while academic citations of Read’s article give ↗ “… it took me many years to draw like these children.” Neither says “four years,” and neither says “paint.”

Oxford Essential Quotations: Picasso to Herbert Read, The Times, 27 October 1956

The paper trail, in order

27 October 1956 — Herbert Read publishes the remark in The Times. Oxford Essential Quotations records it ↗ as said “to Herbert Read, when visiting an exhibition of children’s drawings,” and describes the source as a letter from Read to the paper; scholarly citations give it as Read’s article ‘Picasso at 75’, p. 7 ↗.
1969–1984 — the remark is retold in book after book — Pierre Dufour (1969), the Picasso for Portland catalogue (1970), Adrian Stokes (1972), The Antioch Review (1982), Jan Ehrenwald (1984), all visible in full-text book search ↗. In every one the first half is about drawing like Raphael, and not one of them attaches a figure to it. The second half is a different matter: it is already sliding between draw and paint by 1969, when Dufour writes that Picasso “confesses that it took him a long time to learn to paint ‘like a child’” (p. 99), and The Child in Care 12 (1972), p. 15 prints “At twelve I could draw like Raphael. It took me a whole lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.”
1989 — the modern sentence appears complete, as a source-less pull-quote credited to “Pablo Picasso,” in Modern Drummer vol. 13, p. 50 — the earliest datable printing that could be located ↗. Two Chinese-language periodical runs — 聯合文學 and 歷史月刊 — surface in that same search carrying the English sentence under a 1988 date, but Google dates a bound multi-issue run by the run rather than by the issue: a monthly at volumes 198–203 is many years past 1988.
1998 to now — the same wording is printed in The Drum Perspective, p. 73, which is the citation Wikiquote gives under “Attributed from posthumous publications” ↗. Note what that means: the earliest authority anyone can produce for the world’s most-quoted Picasso line about children is a book about drumming, published decades after he died.

The famous “four years … a lifetime to paint like a child” sentence has no identifiable author and no identifiable first publication, so no rights status can honestly be asserted for it — and it certainly cannot be called public domain. The nearest documented text, Herbert Read’s report of the remark in The Times of 27 October 1956, was first published long after 1930 and is modern in-copyright newspaper material; treat any reproduction of Read’s actual wording accordingly.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Know a source that supports or challenges this? Add a link →

Fact-check

What actually went wrong

This is not a fabricated quote pinned on a famous name — it is a real remark that lost its shape in transmission, then acquired a number nobody can account for. Three separate things have gone wrong with it.

Pablo Picasso reworded

The documented remark is about drawing, not painting, and gives no figure for the first half. Oxford Essential Quotations records it as ↗ “When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.”

“four years” unsourced

No source has been found in which Picasso puts a duration on how long it took him to draw like Raphael. Where he is reported boasting about his early skill, he gives an age, not a span — “When I was twelve I drew like Raphael” in the 1970 Picasso for Portland catalogue, visible in full-text book search ↗, and “At eight, I was Raphael” in his granddaughter Marina Picasso’s Picasso, My Grandfather (2001), listed by Wikiquote as an alternative form ↗.

Herbert Read’s 1956 report false footnote

The 1956 citation is now routinely attached to wordings it does not contain. DailyArt Magazine, for instance, prints ↗ “When I was a child, I could draw like Raphael, but it has taken me a lifetime to learn to draw like a child” under the correct Read / Times 27 October 1956 reference. A correct footnote on an incorrect sentence is how a paraphrase acquires the authority of a primary source.

Picasso really did say it — at an exhibition of children’s drawings, in Herbert Read’s hearing, and Read printed it in The Times of 27 October 1956. He just said it about drawing, in different words, and without the four years. Scholarly citations of Read’s article agree on the substance ↗.

Context

Why this one drifted so far

Picasso turned 75 in October 1956, and the British critic Herbert Read marked it in The Times. Read had watched Picasso go round an exhibition of children’s drawings, and reported what he said there. The line was irresistible: the most technically gifted painter of the century admitting that the hardest thing he ever learned was how to be unskilled again.

Irresistible lines get retold, and retelling reshapes them. Through the 1960s, 70s and 80s the remark circulates in book after book with the same idea and different words — “At twelve I could draw like Raphael,” “Once I drew like Raphael, but it has taken me a lifetime to draw like a child,” “it took him years to learn to draw like a child.” Every one of those has him drawing like Raphael, and not one of them puts a number on it. The second half is looser: “paint like a child” is already in print by 1969 in Pierre Dufour, and The Child in Care has “it took me a whole lifetime to learn how to paint like a child” in 1972. So the verb drifts early. What shows up late — and shows up with no source behind it at all — is the number: four years.

“It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.”

The wording, decade by decade

1956 — the documented remark, published by Herbert Read in The Times: draw like Raphael; many years to learn to draw like these children.

1969–1984 — a full-text book search of the period ↗ returns a spread of retellings — Pierre Dufour’s Picasso 1950–1968 (1969), the Picasso for Portland catalogue (1970), Adrian Stokes (1972), The Antioch Review (1982), Jan Ehrenwald (1984). All of them have him drawing like Raphael, and none says “four years.” The second clause is already unstable: Dufour (p. 99) and The Child in Care 12 (1972), p. 15 both have him learning to paint like a child.

1989 — the modern wording appears whole, as a pull-quote in a Modern Drummer column, credited simply to “Pablo Picasso.” The same sentence is printed in The Drum Perspective (1998), p. 73 — the citation Wikiquote still carries.

Today — the 1989 wording has overwritten the 1956 one, and is now routinely footnoted to the 1956 source that does not contain it.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Creativity Growth Simplicity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Oxford Essential Quotations — Pablo Picassooxfordreference.com

Oxford University Press records the remark as Picasso made it to Herbert Read, and cites Read in The Times, 27 October 1956.

Wikiquote: Pablo Picassoen.wikiquote.org

Files the "four years" wording under "Attributed from posthumous publications", earliest cite The Drum Perspective (1998), p. 73.

Temperton, "Communicating and Thinking Through Drawing" (2018)ray.yorksj.ac.uk

A conference paper quoting the 1956 wording and citing Read, H. (1956) Picasso at 75, The Times, October 27th, 7.

Google Books: "four years to paint like Raphael" (to 1998)google.com

Full-text book search showing the earliest located printings of the popular wording: Modern Drummer (1989) and The Drum Perspective (1998).

Google Books: Raphael/child variants, 1950–1986google.com

Pre-1987 retellings, all about drawing and none containing "four years" — the drift, visible in print.

DailyArt Magazine — the stories behind the artdailyartmagazine.com

An example of the drift in the wild: a third wording printed under the correct Read / Times 1956 citation.

The author

About Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

1881–1973 · Spanish painter, sculptor & co-founder of Cubism

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was a Spanish artist whose Cubist innovations and enormous output made him one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century art. He was a genuinely precocious draughtsman — the boast that as a boy he could already draw like Raphael recurs in his reported conversation — and in later life he spoke admiringly of the directness of children’s drawing. That real, documented sentiment is what the famous “four years” sentence compresses; the compression, not the sentiment, is what nobody can source.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Herbert Read in The Times, 27 October 1956

Herbert Read, The Times (London), 27 October 1956, 7 — cited variously as Read’s article “Picasso at 75” and, by Oxford University Press, as a letter from Read to the paper; the remark is recorded in Susan Ratcliffe, ed., Oxford Essential Quotations, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, published online 2016), s.v. “Pablo Picasso.” The popular “four years … a lifetime to paint like a child” wording is not in that source; the earliest datable printing located is Modern Drummer 13 (1989), 50, with the same wording in Peter Erskine and Rick Mattingly, The Drum Perspective (1998), 73 — the source cited by Wikiquote.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-took-me-four-years-to-paint-like-raphael-but-a-lifetime/