Claude Monet Quotes - Page 4

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I'm appalled at the colours I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying.

Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.

I can only draw what I see.

I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant.

As for myself, I met with as much success as I ever could have wanted. In other words, I was enthusiastically run-down by every critic of the period.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I never draw except with brush and paint.

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.

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.

Manet wanted one day to paint my wife and children. Renoir was there. He took a canvas and began painting them, too. After a while, Manet took me aside and whispered, 'You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future - do advise him to give up painting! You can see for yourself that it's not his metier at all.

What can be said about a man who is interested in nothing but his painting? It's a pity if a man can only interest himself in one thing. But I can't do any thing else. I have only one interest.