Top 100 Quotes About Claude Monet: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Claude Monet

#1. In Naples, Fla., I met a self-made man, a multimillionaire, whose round penthouse apartment is home to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, and Mickey Mantle. He had purchased the most coveted items auctioned by the Mantle family at Madison Square Garden in December 2003.

Jane Leavy

#2. Claude Monet was the incomparable painter of bright daylight...Monet was the painter of light.

Christoph Heinrich

#3. I hate darkness. Claude Monet once said that painting in general did not have light enough in it. I agree with him. We painters, however, can never reproduce sunlight as it really is. I can only approach the truth of it.

Joaquin Sorolla

#4. 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.

Claude Monet

#5. I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.

Claude Monet

#6. I never draw except with brush and paint ...

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#9. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#11. I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

Claude Monet

#12. 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.

Claude Monet

#13. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#15. 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 ...

Claude Monet

#16. What I need most of all is color, always, always.

Claude Monet

#17. When I work I forget all the rest.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#20. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Claude Monet

#21. I didn't become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.

Claude Monet

#22. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#24. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#26. 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.

Claude Monet

#27. I'm working hard with more determination than ever. My success at the Salon led to my selling several paintings and since your absence I have made 800 francs; I hope, when I have contracts with more dealers, it will be better still.

Claude Monet

#28. 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.

Claude Monet

#29. I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#31. ... Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting ...

Claude Monet

#32. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#34. 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 ...

Claude Monet

#35. 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 ...

Claude Monet

#36. 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 ...

Claude Monet

#37. I'm in a foul mood as I'm making stupid mistakes ... This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away ... what a rage I was in!

Claude Monet

#38. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#40. One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here [in Etretat] will at least have the merit of being unlike anyone else, at least I believe so, because it will simply be the expression of what I, and only I, have felt.

Claude Monet

#41. 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.

Claude Monet

#42. 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 ...

Claude Monet

#43. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#45. Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.

Claude Monet

#46. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#50. 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.

Claude Monet

#51. Light is the most important person in the picture.

Claude Monet

#52. My life has been nothing but a failure.

Claude Monet

#53. 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.

Claude Monet

#54. What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.

Claude Monet

#55. 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.

Claude Monet

#56. I still don't know where I am going to sleep tomorrow.

Claude Monet

#57. 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 ...

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#59. My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#63. I would love to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but I cannot find them the way I want them.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#65. 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.

Claude Monet

#66. People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#68. I've always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#70. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#74. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#77. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#79. 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 ...

Claude Monet

#80. Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.

Claude Monet

#81. I must have flowers, always, and always.

Claude Monet

#82. Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#86. 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.

Claude Monet

#87. 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.

Claude Monet

#88. I've been working so hard that I'm exhausted ... I feel I won't be able to do without a few weeks' rest, so I'm going off to see the sea.

Claude Monet

#89. I can only draw what I see.

Claude Monet

#90. 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.

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

#94. 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 ...

Claude Monet