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No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
Claude Monet -
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Claude Monet
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Manet wanted one day to paint my wife and children. Renoir was there. He took a canvas and began painting them, too. After a while, Manet took me aside and whispered, 'You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future - do advise him to give up painting! You can see for yourself that it's not his metier at all.
Claude Monet -
Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.
Claude Monet -
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Claude Monet -
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.
Claude Monet -
Light is the most important person in the picture.
Claude Monet -
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.
Claude Monet
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It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations. Well, my dear friend, I intend to battle on, scrape off and start again.
Claude Monet -
Perhaps it's true that I'm very hard on myself, but that's better than exhibiting mediocre work... too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.
Claude Monet -
The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.
Claude Monet -
My life has been nothing but a failure.
Claude Monet -
If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.
Claude Monet -
Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.
Claude Monet
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I must have flowers, always, and always.
Claude Monet -
My heart is forever in Giverny.
Claude Monet -
Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.
Claude Monet -
I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.
Claude Monet -
It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs - that way starvation lies.
Claude Monet -
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.
Claude Monet
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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?
Claude Monet -
I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way.
Claude Monet -
Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Claude Monet -
Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.
Claude Monet