Claude Monet Quotes
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I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.
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The real subject of every painting is light.
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I'm working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.
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Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces, because I like the countryside very much.
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I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.
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I insist upon 'doing it alone'. Much as I enjoyed making the trip there with Renoir as a tourist, I'd find it hard to work there together. I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.. .If he Renoir knew I was about to go, Renoir would doubtless want to join me and that would be equally disastrous for both of us.
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It is only too easy to catch people's attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before.
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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.
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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 light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.
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Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of pink and blue: it's enchanting, it's delicious, and I hope it will please you.
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The older I become the more I realize of that I have to work very hard to reproduce what I search: the instantaneous. The influence of the atmosphere on the things and the light scattered throughout.
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I'm continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.
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You might perhaps like to see the few canvases I was able to save from the bailiffs and the rest, since I thought you might be so good as to help me a little, as I am in quite a desperate state, and the worst is that I can no longer even work.
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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.
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Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It's wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane.
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What can be said about a man who is interested in nothing but his painting? It's a pity if a man can only interest himself in one thing. But I can't do any thing else. I have only one interest.
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One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.
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Light is the most important person in the picture.
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One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here [in Etretat] will at least have the merit of being unlike anyone else, at least I believe so, because it will simply be the expression of what I, and only I, have felt.
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By way of news, I can tell you that Couture, that bad-tempered fellow, has completely given up painting. It's no great pity; in this exhibition, he had some really bad paintings.
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What is it that's taken hold of me, for me to carry on like this in relentless pursuit of something beyond my powers?
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Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.
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Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I'm exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I've set out to do.
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You'll understand, I'm sure that I'm chasing the merest sliver of color. It's my own fault. I want to grasp the intangible. It's terrible how the light runs out. Color, any color, lasts a second, sometimes 3 or 4 minutes at most.