Claude Monet - Real Quotes

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The following week, when he passed in front of me, he sat down and squarely positioned on my chair, looked at my piece. I could then see him turn around, inclining his serious face with a satisfied air and I heard him say to me while smiling: "Not bad, not at all bad this, but it is too much like the real model. You have a stocky man and you depict him as stocky.... Nature, my friend, serves well as a means to study but offers no real interest. Style is the only thing that matters." I was flabbergasted. The truth, life, nature - all that provoked emotions in me - all that constituted for me the real essence and the unique "raison d'être" of art, did not exist for this man!

Claude Monet

I am surrounded by a small group of young landscapists who will be very happy get to know you. Besides, they are real painters... I find myself very well fixed here. I am drawing figures at hard. And at the Academy, there are only landscapists. They begin to perceive that it's a good thing.

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