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..

1864 letter to his friend Frédéric Bazille; as quoted in Monet's landschappen Vivian Rusell; Icob, Alphen aan de Rijn, The Netherlands 2010, p. 12 - 1850–1870