Claude Monet Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.

Claude Monet
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

Claude Monet
It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

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
I've got it... the Saint Lazare [train-station in Paris, then]. I'll show it just as the trains are starting, with smoke from the engines so thick you can hardly see a thing. It's a fascinating sight, a real dream. I'll get them [the station office] to delay the train for Rouen for half an hour. The light will be better then.

Claude Monet
I've said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.

Claude Monet
I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.

Claude Monet
One day I am satisfied, the next day I find it all bad; still I hope that some day I will find some of them good.

Claude Monet
Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude...its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.

Claude Monet
One day Boudin said to me, 'Learn to draw well and appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky.' I took his advice.

Claude Monet
By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me.

Claude Monet
In Paris one is too preoccupied by what one sees and what one hears, however strong one is; what I am doing here has, I think, the merit of not resembling anyone, because it is simply the expression of what I myself have experienced.

Claude Monet
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.

Claude Monet
Lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal and that I'm out of my mind, but that's just too bad

Claude Monet
.. but what a pity that I did not come here [Venice] when I was younger and more adventurous.

Claude Monet
Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.

Claude Monet
Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than Sargent thinks. But he went on to agree that impressionists had noted how strong

Claude Monet
I am weary, having worked without a break all day; how beautiful it is here, to be sure, but how difficult to paint! I can see what I want to do quite clearly but I'm not there yet. It's so clear and pure in its pink and blues that the slightest misjudged stroke looks like a smudge of dirt.... I have fourteen canvases underway.

Claude Monet
For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.

Claude Monet
My garden is a slow work, pursued with love and I do not deny that I am proud of it. Forty years ago, when I established myself here, there was nothing but a farmhouse and a poor orchard...I bought the house and little by little I enlarged and organized it...I dug, planted weeded, myself; in the evenings the children watered.

Claude Monet
It is beautiful here [in Etretat, Normandy], my friend; every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting.... I want to fight, scratch it off, start again, because I start to see and understand. I seems to me as if I can see nature and I can catch it all.... it is by observation and reflection that I discover how. That is what we are working on, continuously..

Claude Monet
My dear Pissarro, Forgive me for not answering your first letter earlier, but I 'm starting to work full steam ahead and have hardly any time. I received your second letter this morning and I see that you are going to great pains on my behalf and getting nowhere: I'm sorry to be giving you so much trouble; so drop the whole thing, and I'll ask Durand-Ruel if he could see to it for me, he might be able to get rid of these damn frames.
I see that you are definitely going to leave that delightful country for good. Where are you going to, Paris or Louveciennes? I hope you'll write and let me know...

Claude Monet
I'm half an hour late, I'll come back tomorrow. [because the sun went that day too far already, in Monet's opinion]

Claude Monet
I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.

Claude Monet
I've done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don't want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that's enough.

Claude Monet
I climb up, go down again, then climb up once more; between all my studies, as a relaxation I explore every footpath, always curious to see something new.

Claude Monet
I am in a very black mood and profoundly disgusted with painting. It really is a continual torture! Don't expect to see anything new, the little I did manage to do has been destroyed, scraped off, or torn up. You've no idea what appalling weather we've had continuously these two past months. When you're trying to convey the weather, the atmosphere and the general mood, it's enough to make you mad with rage.

Claude Monet
A group of painters assembled in my home, read with pleasure the article you published in 'L'Avenir national'. We are all very pleased to see you defend ideas which are also ours, and we hope that, as you say, 'L'Avenir national' will kindly lend us its support when the Society we are in the process of forming is finally established [forming a new artist-group, to organize an independent and concurrent exhibition, an alternative exhibition for the official yearly (rather classical) Paris Salon].

Claude Monet
I'm very sorry to inconvenience you [the art dealers G. and J. Berheim-Jeune], but I find it impossible to supply you with any more Venice pictures. It was useless trying to persuade my self otherwise, the work that's left is too poor for exhibition. Don't insist.... I've enough good sense in me to know whether what I'm doing is good or bad, and it's utterly bad, and I can't believe that people of taste, if they have any knowledge at all, could see any value in it. Things have been dragging on like this for far too long...

Claude Monet
I didn't become one... As long as I can remember I've always been one.

Claude Monet