Claude Monet Quotes
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I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.
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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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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 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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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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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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For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.
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I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.
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No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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.
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If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!
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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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Lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal and that I'm out of my mind, but that's just too bad.
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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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When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more.