When painters get together they talk about where you can buy the best turpentine
Not sourced to Picasso — traced to Garson KaninGarson Kanin1912–1999 · American writer, director and memoirist — the earliest documented source, not necessarily the originator
The earliest evidence Quote Investigator has located is Garson Kanin’s 1966 memoir Remembering Mr. Maugham (Atheneum, New York), page 45, where Kanin writes that Picasso says it. But in 1969 Kanin printed the same observation crediting film director Jean Renoir instead, and no interview, letter or writing of Picasso’s containing the line has ever been produced. As QI puts it, the saying “seems to trace back to Kanin’s comments.”
“When painters get together they talk about where you can buy the best turpentine” Attributed to Pablo Picasso, but unverified. The earliest known appearance is Garson Kanin's memoir "Remembering Mr. Maugham" (New York: Atheneum, 1966), page 45, where Kanin credits Picasso; in 1969 Kanin credited the same observation to film director Jean Renoir. Quote Investigator has found no substantive independent evidence, and no source in Picasso's own words is known. — Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Picasso says that when art critics get together they talk about content, style, trend and meaning, but that when painters get together they talk about where can you get the best turpentine.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Pablo Picasso. Use the credit shown above instead.
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Provenance
Earliest known appearance
Earliest documented in
Remembering Mr. Maugham
Author & imprint
Garson Kanin — Atheneum, New York, 1966
Page
45, per Quote Investigator
Credited there to
Pablo Picasso — but Kanin credited Jean Renoir for the same observation in 1969
Picasso says that when art critics get together they talk about content, style, trend and meaning, but that when painters get together they talk about where can you get the best turpentine.
1966, at second hand
Kanin’s 1966 wording as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗. Note that it reads “where can you get” — the modern circulating form, “where you can buy the best turpentine,” matches the later 1996 magazine version, not this one.
1966 — The earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator ↗: Garson Kanin’s memoir Remembering Mr. Maugham, page 45, reports the remark as something Picasso says — critics talk about content, style, trend and meaning; painters talk about turpentine.
1969 — Kanin retells it in Louisville’s Courier-Journal of 2 November, this time crediting film director Jean Renoir on the painters who came to his father’s house: they “never talked about grand theories of painting; they talked about where to get the best turpentine” (QI ↗).
1971–1972 — Newspapers recirculate the Picasso version with the wording loosening: the Grosse Pointe News of 23 September 1971 and the Courier-News of 30 December 1972 both print “where you can get the best turpentine” (QI’s citation list ↗).
1996 — New York magazine of 30 September prints the familiar “buy the best turpentine” form and sources it to a Life interview with Picasso in the early sixties; QI reports finding no support for that claim ↗.
The only work this quotation can be tied to is Garson Kanin’s Remembering Mr. Maugham, published by Atheneum in New York in 1966 — well after 1930, so that text is in copyright in the United States. The modern circulating wording (“where you can buy the best turpentine”) does not match Kanin’s sentence and has no confirmed source of its own, so nothing here can be treated as public domain.
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.
Fact-check
Who it gets pinned on
This is a quotation with one documented reporter and two competing names, and the internet settled on the more famous of them.
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The popular creditPablo Picasso (1881–1973) Unsupported
Kanin’s 1966 memoir does credit Picasso — but at second hand, and Quote Investigator ↗ reports finding no substantive independent evidence for it. Picasso was alive when the book appeared and lived until 1973; no interview, letter or writing of his containing the line has been produced, and the word “turpentine” does not appear anywhere on Wikiquote’s Picasso page ↗.
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Kanin's own second versionJean Renoir Same reporter, different name
In a 1969 piece in Louisville’s Courier-Journal, Kanin told the story again about the film director Jean Renoir and the painters who visited his father’s house: they “never talked about grand theories of painting; they talked about where to get the best turpentine” (QI ↗).
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The claimed primary sourceA Life magazine interview Unverified
A widely circulated form reads “when artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine,” which Wikiquote editors record as endlessly attributed to Picasso ↗ while noting they cannot identify the interview it is supposedly from.
The joke works because it deflates a whole industry in one clause: critics theorise, painters shop. It needs a painter’s name attached to land, and Picasso — alive and quotable when Kanin published in 1966, and still the default name for ‘famous painter’ sixty years on — is the frictionless choice. Kanin’s own 1969 retelling swapped in Jean Renoir and the anecdote survived the swap intact, which is a fair sign the name was never the load-bearing part.
What makes this case unusual is that the doubt comes from the source himself. Most orphan quotations have one early printing and a fog behind it; this one has a single identifiable reporter who told it two different ways within three years, and no third party who heard it from Picasso.
The one man who documented it credited two different people.
Read the full story
The wording has drifted steadily. Kanin’s 1966 text has painters asking “where can you get the best turpentine”; 1970s newspaper versions say “where you can get”; the modern circulating form — and the one in New York magazine in 1996 — says “where you can buy the best turpentine.” A widely shared variant substitutes “cheap turpentine.” None of these is a transcript of anything Picasso is documented as saying.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1912–1999 · American screenwriter, director and memoirist
Garson Kanin (1912–1999) was an American writer, director and actor, married to the actress Ruth Gordon from 1942 until her death in 1985; the two frequently co-wrote screenplays directed by George Cukor and starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. He was also a copious note-taker, and his 1966 memoir Remembering Mr. Maugham — with a foreword by Noël Coward — reconstructs years of conversation at W. Somerset Maugham’s Villa Mauresque. That book contains the first known appearance of the turpentine remark, presented as something Picasso says; three years later Kanin told the story again with Jean Renoir as its source, which is why the line’s true origin is still unsettled.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this page
Earliest documented in Garson Kanin, Remembering Mr. Maugham (New York: Atheneum, 1966), 45, as reported in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: When Painters Get Together They Talk About Where You Can Buy the Best Turpentine,” October 20, 2016. No source in Picasso’s own words is known.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When painters get together they talk about where you can buy the best turpentine’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-painters-get-together-they-talk-about-where-you-can/