Claude Monet
Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.Collection: Time
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.Collection: Love
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.Collection: Nature
Etretat is becoming more and more amazing. Now is the real moment: the beach with all its fine boats; it is superb, and I am enraged not to be more skillful in rendering all this. I would need two hands and hundreds of canvases.Collection: Amazing
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.Collection: Art
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.Collection: Nature
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.Collection: Art
My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.Collection: Nature
My life has been nothing but a failure.Collection: Failure
I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.Collection: Alone
Try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. 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 you your own impression of the scene before you.
It is extraordinary to see the sea; what a spectacle! She is so unfettered that one wonders whether it is possible that she again become calm.
No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.
I pass my time in the open air on the beach when it is really heavy weather or when the boats go out fishing.
Among the seascapes, I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbor covered with small sails.
I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made.
I was definitely born under an evil star. I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm.
I will do water - beautiful, blue water.
I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.
Finally here is a beautiful day, a superb sun like at Giverny. So I worked without stopping, for the tide at this moment is just as I need it for several motifs. This has bucked me up a bit.
I am working, but when one has ceased to do seascape, it is the devil afterward - very difficult; it changes at every instant, and here the weather varies several times in the same day.
For a long time, I have hoped for better days, but alas, today it is necessary for me to lose all hope. My poor wife suffers more and more. I do not think it is possible to be any weaker.
I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful.
There, the grand lines of mountain and sea are admirable, and apart from the exotic vegetation that is here, Monte Carlo is certainly the most beautiful spot of the entire coast: the motifs there are more complete, more picturelike, and consequently easier to execute.
To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.Collection: Names
The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.Collection: Garden
Light is the most important person in the picture.Collection: Light
I must have flowers, always, and always.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Life
It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.Collection: Artist
All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.Collection: Looks
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.Collection: Thinking
Every day 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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Art
It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.Collection: Tragedy
I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.Collection: Artist
The real subject of every painting is light.Collection: Real
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.Collection: Art
I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.Collection: Artist
Everything changes, even stone.Collection: Change
It is better to have done something than to have been someone.Collection: Motivational
These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.Collection: Reflection
The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.Collection: Inspirational
Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.Collection: Inspiration
Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.Collection: Light
My garden is my most beautiful masterpieceCollection: Beautiful
What I need most of all is color, always, always.Collection: Garden
I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Nature