Claude Monet Quotes
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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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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 am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.
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To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there's brilliant sunshine but I don't feel up to looking at it.
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My aim is to give you only the things with which I am completely satisfied, even if it means asking you a little more [time] for them... for if I were to do otherwise I'd turn into a mere painting machine and you would be landed with a pile of incomplete work which would put off the most enthusiastic of art collectors.
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I haven't many years left ahead of me and I must devote all my time to painting, in the hope of achieving something worthwhile in the end, something if possible that will satisfy me.
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If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.
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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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I'm very happy, very delighted. I'm setting to like a fighting cockerel, for I'm surrounded here by all that I love.
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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.
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Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.
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One can do something if one can see and understand it.
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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.
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For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.
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While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose.
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A good impression is lost so quickly.
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What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.
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When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more.
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My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.
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No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.
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I can only draw what I see.
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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.
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When I look at nature I feel as if I'll be able to paint it all, note it all down, and then you might as well forget it once you're working.
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I've only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.