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I'm half an hour late, I'll come back tomorrow.
Claude Monet -
Did you know that I went to London to see Whistler and that I spent about twelve days, very impressed by London and also by Whistler, who is a great artist; moreover, he could not have been more charming to me, and has invited me to exhibit at his show.
Claude Monet
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Pictures aren't made out of doctrines. 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.
Claude Monet -
I am weary, having worked without a break all day; how beautiful it is here, to be sure, but how difficult to paint! I can see what I want to do quite clearly but I'm not there yet. It's so clear and pure in its pink and blues that the slightest misjudged stroke looks like a smudge of dirt.. .I have fourteen canvases underway.
Claude Monet -
I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.
Claude Monet -
It's quite beyond my powers at my age, and yet I want to succeed in expressing what I feel.
Claude Monet -
Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.
Claude Monet -
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.
Claude Monet
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Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.
Claude Monet -
I see less and less.. .I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up.. ..I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.
Claude Monet -
'..learn to draw: that's where most of you Troyon's pupils are falling down today.. ..draw with all your might; you can never learn to much. However, don’t neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them..' Monet is quoting in his letter Troyon, a friend of Boudin in Paris
Claude Monet -
It took me a long time to understand my water lilies.. .I planted them for pleasure, and grew them without thinking of painting them.. You don't absorb a landscape in a day.. .And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette.
Claude Monet -
Despite my exhaustion I have a devil of a time getting to sleep because of the rats above my bed and a pig who lives beneath my room.
Claude Monet -
I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.
Claude Monet
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Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces, because I like the countryside very much.
Claude Monet -
I am surrounded by a small group of young landscapists who will be very happy get to know you. Besides, they are real painters... I find myself very well fixed here. I am drawing figures at hard. And at the Academy, there are only landscapists. They begin to perceive that it's a good thing.
Claude Monet -
I climb up, go down again, then climb up once more; between all my studies, as a relaxation I explore every footpath, always curious to see something new.
Claude Monet -
Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.
Claude Monet -
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.
Claude Monet -
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.
Claude Monet
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My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
Claude Monet -
Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows.
Claude Monet -
It is difficult to stop in time because one gets carried away. But I have that strength; it is the only strength I have.
Claude Monet -
These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It's quite beyond my powers at my age, and yet I want to succeed in expressing what I feel.
Claude Monet