Claude Monet Quotes

I insist upon 'doing it alone' ... I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.

I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.

Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

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.

While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose ...

I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics.

When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any more.

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

The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment.

Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.

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.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

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.

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.

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.

One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It's true that fretting never did any good.

Pictures aren't made out of doctrines. Since the appearance of impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red ... But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections.

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.

It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.

I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint ...

Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks.

I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.

I'm enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.

It would be a very bad idea ... to exhibit even a small number of this new series, as the whole effect can only be achieved from an exhibition of the entire group.

What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.

I'm very happy, very delighted. I'm setting to like a fighting cockerel, for I'm surrounded here by all that I love.

I see less and less ... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up ... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.

No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet.

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

Canvases between 8 centimetres and 1 metre are priced around 25,000 francs. In the past I used to sell them from between 50 to 100 francs at the most. I have to say ... that I feel somewhat embarrassed at this admission.

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

I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but ... I'm increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I'm praying that I'll have a few more good years left to me ...

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

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.

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 ...

Despite my extremely modest prices, dealers and art lovers are turning their backs on me. It is very depressing to see the lack of interest shown in an art object which has no market value.

The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre.

I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.

I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.

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

It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.

What is it that's taken hold of me, for me to carry on like this in relentless pursuit of something beyond my powers?

I had so much fire in me and so many plans ...

I want to paint the way a bird sings.

I must have flowers, always, and always.

Light is the most important person in the picture.

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

I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me ...

It goes without saying that I will do anything at any price to pull myself out of a situation like this [rejection] so that I can start work immediately on my next Salon picture and ensure that such a thing should not happen again.

It's enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience.

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.

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.

The further I get, the more I regret how little I know ...

I'm not lacking for enthusiasm as you can see, given that I have something like 65 canvases covered with paint and I'll be needing more since the place is quite out of the ordinary; so I'm going to order some more canvases ...

It's the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one's done.

I don't think I'm made for any earthly kind of pleasure.

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.

I have once more taken up things that can't be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I'm always tackling that sort of thing!

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.

Think of me getting up before 6, I'm at work by 7 and I continue until 6.30 in the evening, standing up all the time, nine canvases. It's murderous ...

As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.

It is better to have done something than to have been someone.

I'm in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint.

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

Ninety per cent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in ... Ruskin's Elements.

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

I am pleased with the exhibition ... everything on display was sold for a good price to decent people. It has been a long time since I believed that you could educate public taste ...

The creditors are proving impossible to deal with and short of a sudden appearance on the scene of wealthy art patrons, we are going to be turned out of this dear little house where I led a simple life and was able to work so well. I do not know what will become of us ...

Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows.

I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I'm appalled at the colours I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying.

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.

Water Lilies' is an extension of my life. Without the woter the lilies cannot live, as I am without art.

I'm quite content: although what I'm doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same ...

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.

If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.

I can only draw what I see.

A good impression is lost so quickly ...

I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain.

All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It's enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.

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

It is only too easy to catch people's attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before.

Despite my exhaustion I have a devil of a time getting to sleep because of the rats above my bed and a pig who lives beneath my room ...

Thanks to my work everything's going well; it's a great consolation.

One can do something if one can see and understand it ...

Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.

To have gone to all this trouble to get to this is just too stupid! Outside there's brilliant sunshine but I don't feel up to looking at it ...

I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.

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.

Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I'm exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I've set out to do.

I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones.