Claude Monet Quotes

The effect of sincerity is to give one's work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.

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

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

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

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

Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude...its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.

One day I am satisfied, the next day I find it all bad; still I hope that some day I will find some of them good.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

The real subject of every painting is light.

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

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

I must have flowers, always, and always.

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.

My heart is forever in Giverny.

Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.

The Thames was all gold. God it was beautiful, so fine that I began working a frenzy, following the sun and its reflections on the water.

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

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

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

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

Everything changes, even stone.

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

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.

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.

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.

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.

Light is the most important person in the picture.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.

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

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.

To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.

What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.

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.

For almost two months now I've been struggling away with no result.

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.

the more I live, the more I regret how little i know

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.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of pink and blue: it's enchanting, it's delicious, and I hope it will please you.

The older I become the more I realize of that I have to work very hard to reproduce what I search: the instantaneous. The influence of the atmosphere on the things and the light scattered throughout.