Claude Monet Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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 am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.
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My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.
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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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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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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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I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.
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The point is to know how to use the colours, the choice of which is, when all's said and done, a matter of habit.
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Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.
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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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I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.
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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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If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!
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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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When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.
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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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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.
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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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It's the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one's done.
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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.