Claude Monet
These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It's quite beyond my powers at my age, and yet I want to succeed in expressing what I feel.Collection: Reflection
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.Collection: Appreciate
By the single example of this painter devoted to his art with such independence, my destiny as a painter opened out to me.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Depression
What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.Collection: Flower
I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.Collection: Light
I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way.Collection: Trying
I think only of my painting, and if I were to drop it, I think I'd go crazy.Collection: Crazy
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.Collection: Perfect
I'm going to get down to a still life on a size 50 canvas of rayfish and dogfish with old fishermen's baskets. Then I'm going to turn out a few pictures to send wherever possible, given that now, first and foremost - unfortunately - I have to earn some money.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Frustration
Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax.Collection: Relaxation
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.Collection: Light
It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs - that way starvation lies.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Determination
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.Collection: Contentment
I've always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.Collection: Technique
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.Collection: Long
My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth.Collection: Taken
You might perhaps like to see the few canvases I was able to save from the bailiffs and the rest, since I thought you might be so good as to help me a little, as I am in quite a desperate state, and the worst is that I can no longer even work.Collection: Littles
I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Order
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!Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Ideas
I do have a dream, a tableau of the bathing place of La Grenouillère, for which I've done some bad pochades (sketches), but it is a dream. Renoir, who have just spent a couple of months here, also wants to paint this subject.Collection: Dream