Top 180 Quotes & Sayings by Claude Monet
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French artist Claude Monet.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
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 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.
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 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.
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.
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.
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.
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
I pass my time in the open air on the beach when it is really heavy weather or when the boats go out fishing.
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
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 am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.
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.
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 will do water - beautiful, blue water.
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.
My life has been nothing but a failure.
My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.
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.
Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.
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.
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.
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.
Nature won't be summoned to order and won't be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught.
It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.
I didn't become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.
Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.
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.
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece
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.
These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.
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.
For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.
It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
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.
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.
The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.
You'll understand, I'm sure that I'm chasing the merest sliver of color. It's my own fault. I want to grasp the intangible. It's terrible how the light runs out. Color, any color, lasts a second, sometimes 3 or 4 minutes at most.
It is better to have done something than to have been someone.
Everything changes, even stone.
Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.
I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint.
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.
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.
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.
Light is the most important person in the picture.
I must have flowers, always, and always.
All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.
The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.
The real subject of every painting is light.
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.
I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.
To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.
I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.
What I need most of all is color, always, always.
Related Authors
Ai Weiwei Quotes
Chinese
Artist
Andy Warhol Quotes
American
Artist
David Hockney Quotes
English
Artist
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes
American
Artist
Gerhard Richter Quotes
German
Artist
Henri Matisse Quotes
French
Artist
Kehinde Wiley Quotes
American
Artist
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
Italian
Artist
Marcel Duchamp Quotes
French
Artist
Marina Abramovic Quotes
Serbian
Artist
Maurice Sendak Quotes
American
Artist
Michelangelo Quotes
Italian
Artist
Paul Cezanne Quotes
French
Artist
Robert Genn Quotes
Canadian
Artist
Robert Henri Quotes
American
Artist
Yoko Ono Quotes
American
Artist