Claude Monet Quotes
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Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.
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All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.
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My heart is forever in Giverny.
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There are the most amusing things everywhere in The Netherlands. Houses of every colour, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French... .I have not had time to visit the museums, I wish to work first of all and I'll treat myself to that later.
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I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones.
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No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others.
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My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth.
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I know well enough in advance that you'll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they'll be a great success, but I couldn't be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I'm certain of it.
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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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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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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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I would love to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but I cannot find them the way I want them.
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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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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.
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I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.
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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.
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I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
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It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.
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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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One day Boudin said to me, 'Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.' I took his advice.
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Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
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It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs - that way starvation lies.
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Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.
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I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.