Claude Monet Quotes
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These palms are driving me crazy; the motifs are extremely difficult to seize, to put on canvas; it's so bushy everywhere, although delightful to the eye.. .I would like to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but cannot find them as I would like.
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I felt the need, in order to widen my field of observation and to refresh my vision in front of new sights, to take myself away for a while from the area where I was living, and to make some trips lasting several weeks in Normandy, Brittany and elsewhere..
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It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
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Did not Troyon tell me to enter the studio of Couture in Paris? It is needless to tell you how decided was my refusal to do so. I admit even that it cooled me, temporarily at least, in my esteem and admiration of Troyon.. ..and I after all, connected myself only with artists who were seeking.
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My garden is a slow work, pursued with love and I do not deny that I am proud of it. Forty years ago, when I established myself here, there was nothing but a farmhouse and a poor orchard...I bought the house and little by little I enlarged and organized it...I dug, planted weeded, myself; in the evenings the children watered.
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I tell myself that anyone who says he has finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. Finished means complete, perfect, and I toil away without making any progress, searching, fumbling around, without achieving anything much.
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Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
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I'm enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.
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To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me.. .Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat.. .I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.
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I've done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don't want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that's enough.
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I have not been able to see a bit of sea or any water at all; everything is frozen and covered with snow.
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I have gone back to some things that can't possibly be done: water, with weeds waving at the bottom. It is a wonderful sight, but it drives one to crazy to try to paint it. But that is the kind of thing I am always a tackling.
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Since the appearance of Impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red.. .But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections.
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You know the affection I have always had for you Boudin and also the gratitude. I have never forgotten that you were the first who taught me to see and to comprehend.
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I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
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Zaandam is particularly remarkable and there is enough here to paint for a life-time.
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I am working as hard as I possibly can, and do not even dream of doing anything except the cathedral. It is an immense task.
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I've said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.
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For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the air and the light which vary continually. For me, it is only the, surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.
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Ninety percent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in.. ..Ruskin's Elements.
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Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude...its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.
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All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.
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I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me.
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I won't be here long, I am working as hard as I can, as I told you in a letter yesterday, I am very happy to be here Etretat, Normandy and I hope to come up with something good, in any case I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.