Claude Monet Quotes (87 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Claude Monet: 87 quotes 242 likes

Famous Claude Monet Quotes

“What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

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

Claude Monet

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”

Claude Monet

“I must have flowers, always, and always.”

Claude Monet

Variant: I must have flowers, always and always.

Claude Monet Quotes about painting

“I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint…”

Claude Monet

“I want to paint the way a bird sings.”

Claude Monet

Variant: I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Source: Monet By Himself

“I have gone back to some things that can't possibly be done: water, with weeds waving at the bottom. It is a wonderful sight, but it drives one to crazy to try to paint it. But that is the kind of thing I am always a tackling.”

Claude Monet

Quote in Monet's letter to art-critic and his friend Gustave Geffroy, 22 June 1890; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 129
1890 - 1900

“One day Eugène Boudin said to me, '.. appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky'. I took his advice and together we went on long outings during which I painted constantly from nature. This was how I came to understand nature and learned to love it passionately.”

Claude Monet

as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World’s greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 10
after Monet's death

“I have at last found a suitable spot and settled her. I have already spend a few days working and started eight canvases, which I hope, if the weather favours me, will give an idea of Norway and the environs of Christiania... This morning I was painting under constant falling snow. You would have burst out laughing seeing me white all over, my beard overgrown with icicles.”

Claude Monet

in his letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, late January 1895; (Geoffrey, 1922, vol 2 pp. 87-88); as cited in: Nathalia Brodskaya, Claude Monet, 2011, p. 106
Similar translation:
One should live here for a year in order to accomplish something of value, and that is only after having seen and gotten to know the country. I painted today, a part of the day, in the snow, which falls endlessly. You would have laughed if you could have seen me completely white, with icicles hanging from my beard like stalactites.
1890 - 1900
Source: Claude Monet, ‎Charles F. Stuckey (1985) Monet: a retrospective, p. 169

“Jongkind.... his painting was too new and far too artistic to be appreciated in 1862 at his prices. Moreover, no one was as bad at making himself valued, as he was. He was a straight-forward and simple kind of man, who could hardly speak bad French and was very shy. But he was very outgoing that day. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained the whys and wherefores underlining his work and thereby, completed the training that I had already received from Boudin. He became from this moment my true master and it [is] to him, that I owe the definitive training of my eyes.”

Claude Monet

Quote from Claude Monet par lui-meme – interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in Le Temps newspaper, 26 November 1900
about Johan Jongkind, famous pre-impressionist landscape-painter of Dutch origin, painting then in Honfleur for some years and advising Monet then.
1900 - 1920

Claude Monet: Trending quotes

“I can only draw what I see.”

Claude Monet

Drawing

“I'm very sorry to inconvenience you [ the art dealers G. and J. Berheim-Jeune ], but I find it impossible to supply you with any more Venice pictures. It was useless trying to persuade my self otherwise, the work that's left is too poor for exhibition. Don't insist... I've enough good sense in me to know whether what I'm doing is good or bad, and it' utterly bad, and I can't believe that people of taste, if they have any knowledge at all, could see any value in it. Things have been dragging on like this for far too long..”

Claude Monet

Quote in Monet's letter to his art-dealers [[wBernheim-Jeune|G. and J. Berheim-Jeune], Venice, 1912; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 72
1900 - 1920

People , Art , Knowledge , Sense

“It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written — but then, try to do it! All this proves that one must think of nothing but them [impressions]; it is by dint of observation and reflection that one makes discoveries.”

Claude Monet

2 quotes in Monet's letter to Frédéric Bazille from Honfleur, July 15, 1864; as cited in Mary M. Gedo (2013) Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art. p. 114-15 / p. 60
1860s

Nature , Thinking

Claude Monet Quotes

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

Claude Monet

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

Claude Monet

Flowers

“I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.”

Claude Monet

Feeling

“.. but what a pity that I did not come here [in Venice] when I was younger and more adventurous.”

Claude Monet

Quote in Monet's letter to art-ritic and friend Gustave Geffroy, 1907; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 56
1900 - 1920

“I'm very happy, very delighted.... for I am surrounded here by all that I love. I spent my time out of doors.... and naturally I'm working all the time, and I think this year I'm going to do some serious things. And then in the evening, dear fellow, I come home to my little cottage to find a good fire and a dear little family... Dear friend, it's a delight to watch this person [his first son Jean, born in 1867] grow, and I am glad to have him to be sure…”

Claude Monet

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille: as cited by K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 22
1850 - 1870

Love , Family , Home , Nature

“I am absolutely sickened with and demoralized by this life, I've been leading for so long. When you get to my age, there is nothing more to look forward to.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter to , September 1879; as cited in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, pp. 202-203; also partly cited in: Jane Kinsman, Michael Pantazzi, National Gallery of Australia. Degas: the uncontested master, National Gallery of Australia, 7 apr. 2009. p. 25
1870 - 1890
Context: I am absolutely sickened with and demoralized by this life, I've been leading for so long. When you get to my age, there is nothing more to look forward to. Unhappy we are, unhappy we'll stay. Each day brings its tribulations and each day difficulties arise... So I'm giving up the struggle once and for all, abandoning all hope of success... I hear my friends are preparing another exhibition this year [the Impressionists, in Paris, 1880] but I'm ruling out the possibility of participating in it, as I just don't have anything worth showing.

Life , Age

“It is decidedly frightfully difficult to make something complete in all respects, and I think that there are scarcely any but those who content themselves with the approximate.”

Claude Monet

1850 - 1870
Context: My dear Frédéric Bazille, I ask myself what you can be doing in Paris during fine weather, for I suppose that it must also be very fine there. Here my dear fellow, it is is charming, and I discover every day always beautiful things. It is enough to become mad [fou], so much do I have the desire to do it all, my head is cracking. Damn it, here it is the sixteenth, put aside your cliques and your claques, and come spend a couple of weeks here, it would be the best thing that you could do, because in Paris it cannot be very easy to work.
This very day, I still have a month to stay in; furthermore my sketches are becoming finished, I have even set to work additionally [remis] on some others. In sum, I am content enough with my stay here, even though my studies are very far from what I would wish. It is decidedly frightfully difficult to make something complete in all respects, and I think that there are scarcely any but those who content themselves with the approximate. Very well, my dear fellow, I want to struggle, scrape, start over again [recommencer], because one can do what one sees and understands, and it seems to me, when I see nature, that I am going to do it all, write it all out, but them go try to do it.... when one is on the job..
All this proves that one must only think about this. It is by force of observation and reflection that one finds. So let us grind away and grind away constantly. Are you making any progress? Yes, I am sure of it, but what I am sure of is that you do not work enough and not in the right way. It is not with carefree guys like your Villa and others that you will be able to work. It would be better all alone, and yet, all alone there are plenty of things that one cannot make out. In the end all of this is terrible, and it is a rough task.
... It is frightening what I see in my head.

Thinking

“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.”

Claude Monet

Variant: 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.

Beauty , Madness

“I didn't become one... As long as I can remember I've always been one.”

Claude Monet

after Monet's death
Source: Claude Monet, ‎Charles F. Stuckey (1985) Monet: a retrospective. p. 91
Context: Monet answering the question, how he had became an impressionist.

“I hope that Cezanne will still be here and that he will join us, but he is so shy, so afraid of meeting new people, that I am afraid that he might let us down, even though he wants very much to meet you. How sad it is that this man hasn't had more patronage in his life! This is a true artist who has come to doubt himself far too much. He needs to be cheered up, so e was quote touched by your article.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter from Giverny to Gustave Geffroy, 23 November 1894; as cited in: P. Michael Doran (2001), ‎Art Conversations with Cézanne, p. 3
1890 - 1900

Life , People , Sadness , Hope

“It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written — but then, try to do it!”

Claude Monet

2 quotes in Monet's letter to , July 15, 1864; as cited in Mary M. Gedo (2013) Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art. p. 114-15 / p. 60
1850 - 1870
Context: It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written — but then, try to do it! All this proves that one must think of nothing but them [impressions]; it is by dint of observation and reflection that one makes discoveries.

Nature

“I climb up, go down again, then climb up once more; between all my studies, as a relaxation I explore every footpath, always curious to see something new.”

Claude Monet

Quote in Monet's letter from Bordighera (ca. 1884); as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 52
1870 - 1890

Study

“I have a dream a picture of the bathing spot at the Grenouillere, for which I've made a few poor sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.”

Claude Monet

quote in a letter to Frédéric Bazille, September 25, 1869; as cited in: Bonafoux (1986, 72), cited in Michael P. Farrell (2003) Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work. p. 42
1850 - 1870
Context: [Chopping wood] is harder than you think, and I'll bet that you would not split much wood... All the same, I have probably not reached the end of my troubles. Here is winter at hand, a season not very pleasant for the wretched. Then comes the Salon. Alas! I still won't be in it, for I shall have done nothing. I have a dream a picture of the bathing spot at the Grenouillere, for which I've made a few poor sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.

Dreams , Painting

“It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

Claude Monet

Way

“These palms are driving me crazy; the motifs are extremely difficult to seize, to put on canvas; it's so bushy everywhere, although delightful to the eye... I would like to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but cannot find them as I would like.”

Claude Monet

in a letter from Bordighera to friends in Paris, Jan. 1884; as cited in: Joslyn Art Museum, ‎Holliday T. Day, ‎Hollister Sturges (1987), Joslyn Art Museum: Paintings and Sculpture from the European and American Collections, p. 100
1870 - 1890

Tree , Sea

“A group of painters assembled in my home, read with pleasure the article you published in 'L'Avenir national'. We are all very pleased to see you defend ideas which are also ours, and we hope that, as you say, 'L'Avenir national' will kindly lend us its support when the Society we are in the process of forming is finally established.”

Claude Monet

in a Letter to , May 1873; as quoted by Sue Roe, The private live of the Impressionists, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 120
the coming impressionists are starting to form a new artist-group, to organize an independent and concurrent exhibition, as an alternative exhibition for the official yearly (rather classical) Paris Salon
1870 - 1890

Pleasure , Hope , Home , Idea

“It was not until 1869 that I met him Manet again, but this time, we became friends immediately. From the first meeting, he invited me to join him every evening in a café of the 'Batignolles' where he and his friends would gather to talk at the end of a day spent at their studios. I would meet there, Fantin-Latour and Cézanne, Degas - who arrived shortly afterwards from Italy, the art critic Duranty, Emile Zola who was just starting-off in the literary world and a number of others. I would take Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. There was nothing more interesting than these discussions with their perpetual differences of opinion. Our mind and souls were stimulated... One would always leave, all the better immersed, the will stronger, our thinking more defined and clear.”

Claude Monet

in Claude Monet par lui-meme – interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in Le Temps newspaper, 26 November 1900
about Édouard Manet, leading artist in Impressionism then, in Paris.
1900 - 1920

World , Art , Soul , Thinking

“I tell myself that anyone who says he has finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. Finished means complete, perfect, and I toil away without making any progress, searching, fumbling around, without achieving anything much.”

Claude Monet

Claude Monet, 1893; as quoted in: David W. Galenson (2009), Painting outside the Lines, p. 49
1890 - 1900

Search , Perfection

“I insist upon 'doing it alone'. Much as I enjoyed making the trip there with Renoir as a tourist, I'd find it hard to work there together. I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions… If he Renoir knew I was about to go, Renoir would doubtless want to join me and that would be equally disastrous for both of us.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter to his art-dealer Durand-Ruel in Paris, 1884; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 51
Monet is painting then in Northern Italy then, on the edge of the Mediterranean
1870 - 1890

“I was born undisciplined. Never, even as a child, could I be made to obey a set rule. What little I know I learned at home. School was always like a prison to me, I could never bring myself to stay there, even four hours a day, when the sun was shining and the sea was so tempting, and it was such fun scrambling over cliffs and paddling in the shallows. Such, to the great despair of my parents, was the unruly but healthy life I lived until I was fourteen or fifteen. In the meantime I somehow picked up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, with a smattering of spelling. And there my schooling ended. It never worried me very much because I always had plenty of amusements on the side. I doodled in the margins of my books, I decorated our blue copy paper with ultra-fantastic drawings, and I drew the faces and profiles of my schoolmasters as outrageously as I could, distorting them out of all recognition.”

Claude Monet

in Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 21 : About his youth
after Monet's death

Life , Books , School , Home

“[looking at the dead body of his first wife Camille, 5 Sept 1879], watching her tragic forehead, almost mechanically observing the colors which death was imposing on her rigid face. Blue. Blue, yellows, grey, what do I know?... How natural to to want to reproduce the last image of her, who was leaving us for ever. But even before the idea came to me to record her beloved features, something in me automatically responded tot the shocks of colours. I just seem to be compelled in an unconsciousness activity, the one I engage in every day, like an animal turning in its mill.”

Claude Monet

Quote in Monet's letter, September 1879; as cited in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 209
1870 - 1890

Death , Color , Idea , Nature

“I've never seen such changeable conditions and I had over 15 canvases under way, going from one to the other and back again, and it was never quite right; a few unfortunate brushstrokes and in the end I lost my nerve and in a temper I packed everything away in crates with no further desire to look out of the window, knowing full well that in this mood I'd only mess things up and all the paintings I'd done were awful, and perhaps they are, more than I suppose.”

Claude Monet

Quote of Monet, ca. 1900, London; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 72
1900 - 1920

Way , Mood , Painting

“I was thinking of preparing my palette and my brushes to resume work, but relapses and further bouts of pain prevented it. I'm not giving up that hope and am occupying myself with some major alterations in my studios and plans to perfect the garden [in Giverny ]. All this to show you that, with courage, I'm getting the upper hand.”

Claude Monet

three months before Monet died
Quote from Monet's letter to Georges Clemenceau, Sept. 1926; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 79
1920 - 1926

Pain , Hope , Courage , Thinking

“In Paris one is too preoccupied by what one sees and what one hears, however strong one is; what I am doing here has, I think, the merit of not resembling anyone, because it is simply the expression of what I myself have experienced.”

Claude Monet

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille from Etretat, December 1868; as cited in: Mary Tompkins Lewis (2007) Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. p. 83
1850 - 1870

Thinking , Strong

“I am weary, having worked without a break all day; how beautiful it is here, to be sure, but how difficult to paint! I can see what I want to do quite clearly but I'm not there yet. It's so clear and pure in its pink and blues that the slightest misjudged stroke looks like a smudge of dirt... I have fourteen canvases underway.”

Claude Monet

Monet's quote in a letter from Cote d'Azure to his second wife Alice Hoschedé, (ca. 1886): K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 55
1870 - 1890

Beauty , Painting

“The following week, when he Toulmouche passed in front of me, he sat down and squarely positioned on my chair, looked at my piece. I could then see him turn around, inclining his serious face with a satisfied air and I heard him say to me while smiling: "Not bad, not at all bad this, but it is too much like the real model. You have a stocky man and you depict him as stocky… Nature, my friend, serves well as a means to study but offers no real interest. Style is the only thing that matters." I was flabbergasted. The truth, life, nature - all that provoked emotions in me - all that constituted for me the real essence and the unique "raison d'être" of art, did not exist for this man!”

Claude Monet

Quote from Claude Monet par lui-meme – an interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in 'Le Temps newspaper', 26 November 1900.
About Toulmouche, Monet first painting-teacher in Paris c. 1857
1900 - 1920

Life , Truth , Smile , Art

“By way of news, I can tell you that Couture, that bad-tempered fellow, has completely given up painting. It's no great pity; in this exhibition, he had some really bad paintings.”

Claude Monet

in a letter to Eugène Boudin, February 10, 1860: As cited in: Angelika Taschen (1999) Monet, p. 24
1850 - 1870

Way , Painting

“Colours no longer looked as brilliant to me as they use to do [Monet's sight was beginning to fail], I no longer painted shades of light so correctly. Reds looked muddy to me, pinks insipid, and the intermediate or lower notes in the colour scale escaped me. As for forms, I could see them as clear as ever, and render them as decisively. At first I tried pertinacity. How many times I have remained for hours near the little bridge, exactly were we are now, in the full glare of the sun, sitting on my camp-stool, under my sunshade, forcing myself to resume my interrupted task and to recapture the freshness my palette had lost! A waste of effort. What I painted was more and more mellow.... and (when) I compared it with what I used to do in the old days. I would fall into a frantic rage, and I slashed all my pictures with my penknife.”

Claude Monet

remark by Monet – between 1900 and 1920 – on his 'Water lilies' paintings; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 131-132
1900 - 1920

Decision , Effort , Light , Rage

“I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only frame-maker who could make out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride.”

Claude Monet

after Monet's death
Source: Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 22 : About the first steps in his career

Art , Cry

“I can't hold out any longer and am in a state of utter despair. After a few days of good weather, it's raining again and once again I have had to put the studies I started to one side. It's driving me to distraction and the unfortunate thing is that I take it out on my poor paintings. I destroyed a large picture of flowers which I'd just done along with three or four paintings which I not only scraped down but slashed. This is absurd... Please be kind enough to have some money forwarded to me.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter from Pourville c. 1882, to his art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 50
1870 - 1890

Money , Flowers , Study , Painting

“Did not Troyon tell me to enter the studio of Couture [in Paris]? It is needless to tell you how decided was my refusal to do so. I admit even that it cooled me, temporarily at least, in my esteem and admiration of Troyon.... and [I] after all, connected myself only with artists who were seeking.”

Claude Monet

Quote from an interview with Thiebault-Sisson, 1900; as cited in Monet and His Muse: Camille Monet in the Artist's Life, Mary Mathews Gedo; University of Chicago Press, Sept. 2010, p. 10
1900 - 1920

“There are the most amusing things everywhere [in The Netherlands]. Houses of every colour, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French…. I have not had time to visit the museums, I wish to work first of all and I'll treat myself to that later.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter to Camille Pissarro, 17 June 1871; first part cited in: Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001 http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012200101_01/_van012200101_01_0012.php Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 2001. p. 140; second part cited in: Ann Dumas, ‎Denver Art Museum, ‎High Museum of Art (2007), Inspiring Impressionism: : the Impressionists and the art of the past. p. 181
1870 - 1890

Time , Housing

“My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects, and I still very much regret having caused the naming of a group whose majority had nothing impressionist about it.”

Claude Monet

Quote in his letter to Evan Charteris, June 21, 1926; as cited in: Levine, Steven Z. " Monet's Series: Repetition, Obsession http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/778519." October (1986): 65-75.
1920 - 1926

Nature , Painting

“I could not appreciate his [ Boudin ] paintings and when he offered to take me with him to paint outdoors in the open countryside, I always found a pretext and refused politely. But when summer came, I was more or less free to dispose of my time as I wished and I had no feasible excuse left to give him and gave in. Thus it was, that Boudin - with his inexhaustible kindness - took it upon himself to educate me. With time, my eyes began to open and I really started to understand nature. I also learned to love it. I would analyze its forms with my pencil. I would study its colorations.”

Claude Monet

quote from an interview Claude Monet par lui-meme, by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in 'Le Temps newspaper', 26 November 1900
about Eugène Boudin, who was landscape-painting in and around Le Havre c. 1856; Monet was 16 years old, then
1900 - 1920

Love , Education , Color , Understanding

“[While working beneath the cliff at Manneport, Normandy] I didn't see a huge wave coming; it threw me against the cliff and I was tossed about in its wake along with all my materials! My immediate thought was that I was done for, as the water dragged me down, but in the end I managed to clamber out on all fours, but Lord, what a state I was in! My boots, my thick stockings and my coat were soaked through. The palette which I had kept a grip on had been knocked over my face and my beard was covered in blue, yellow etc. But anyway, now the excitement is passed and no harm's done, the worst of it was that I lost my painting which was very soon broken up, along with my easel, bag etc. Impossible to fish anything out. Besides, everything was torn to shreds by the sea, that "old hag" as you sister calls her.”

Claude Monet

in a letter from Etretat to Alice Hoschedé, 1884; as quoted in: Howard F. Isham (2004) Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century. p. 337
1870 - 1890

Fish , Sister , Water , Painting

“It took me a long time to understand my water lilies... I planted them for pleasure, and grew them without thinking of painting them.. You don't absorb a landscape in a day... And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette.”

Claude Monet

in Marc Elder, A Giverny, chez Claude Monet (1924); as quoted in: Vivian Russell (1998) Monet's Water Lilies: The Inspiration of a Floating World. p. 19
1920 - 1926

Pleasure , Understanding , Thinking , Water

“Did you know that I went to London to see Whistler and that I spent about twelve days, very impressed by London and also by Whistler, who is a great artist; moreover, he could not have been more charming to me, and has invited me to exhibit at his show.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter to art-critic Theodore Duret (13 August 1887, L. 794); as cited in: Katharine Jordan Lochnan, ‎Luce Abélès, ‎James McNeill Whistler (2004), Turner, Whistler, Monet, p. 179
1870 - 1890

“a remark of Monet, quoted by Ambroise Vollard, as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World’s greatest Artists, MONET'; K. E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 44”

Claude Monet

the sun went that day too far already, to be able to finish the painting well - in Monet's opinion
after Monet's death

Life , World , Art , Quotes

“One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here 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. The further I get, the more I regret how little I know, that's what hinders me the most... I don't think I will spend much time in Paris now, a month at the very most, each year.”

Claude Monet

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille; as quoted in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 31.
1850 - 1870

Thinking , Strong , Time

“I have not been able to see a bit of sea or any water at all; everything is frozen and covered with snow.”

Claude Monet

in a letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, 26 February 1895 (L. 1274); as cited in: Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1890 - 1900

Water , Sea

“My dear Pissarro, Forgive me for not answering your first letter earlier, but I 'm starting to work full steam ahead and have hardly any time. I received your second letter this morning and I see that you are going to great pains on my behalf and getting nowhere: I'm sorry to be giving you so much trouble; so drop the whole thing, and I'll ask Durand-Ruel if he could see to it for me, he might be able to get rid of these damn frames.
I see that you are definitely going to leave that delightful country for good. Where are you going to, Paris or Louveciennes? I hope you'll write and let me know…”

Claude Monet

in a letter from Zaandam, The Netherlands, to Camille Pissarro (still in England), 17 June 1871; Cited in: Marianne Alphant (1994), Claude Monet en Holland, p. 87
1870 - 1890

Pain , Hope , Forgiveness , Time

“Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces, because I like the countryside very much.”

Claude Monet

in a letter to Paul Durand-Ruel: as quoted in: Daniel Wildensteijn "Monet's Giveny" in: Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism http://books.google.nl/books?id=H76Nl_fNgOUC, (1978) p. 16: About the countryside in Giverny
1870 - 1890

Hope

“The sea is superb, but the cliffs don't match up to those at Fecamp. Here I'll be certain to do more boats.”

Claude Monet

in his letter from Dieppe; as quoted in: Howard F. Isham (2004) Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century. p. 336 : About his 1880s travels
1870 - 1890

Sea

“You know the affection I have always had for you Boudin and also the gratitude. I have never forgotten that you were the first who taught me to see and to comprehend.”

Claude Monet

Quote in a letter to Boudin, 1892; as cited in Monet and His Muse: Camille Monet in the Artist's Life, Mary Mathews Gedo; University of Chicago Press, Sept. 2010, p. 10
1890 - 1900

Gratitude

“It's quite beyond my powers at my age, and yet I want to succeed in expressing what I feel.”

Claude Monet

his remark in 1908; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 269
1900 - 1920

Age , Feeling

“Zaandam is particularly remarkable and there is enough here to paint for a life-time.”

Claude Monet

Quote of 1871, in Monet's letter to Camille Pissarro, 2 June 1871; as cited in Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001 http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012200101_01/_van012200101_01_0012.php Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 2001. p. 140
1870 - 1890

Life , Time , Painting

“My dear Hoschedé, I do not know if in Paris it is the same weather as here, it is probable and so you will be able to understand my discouragement. I am heartbroken, and I absolutely must share with you all my disillusionment; for nearly two months, I have given myself a lot of trouble without result. You do not believe it perhaps, but it is so: I have not lost an hour and would have reproached myself to have taken even a day to come see our exhibition, just out of the fear of losing a single good painting session, an hour of sun. I alone can know my anxieties and the trouble that I give myself to finish canvases that don't even satisfy me and please so few people. In a word, I am absolutely discouraged, not seeing, not hoping in any future... I feel all too well the void that is being made around me and the impossibility of facing up to my part of our expenses if we were to continue living together... I see everything in black, in pain... Please believe all the sorrow that I have in causing you trouble.”

Claude Monet

In a letter to Ernest Hoschedé, May 15, 1879 (W, letter, 158); as cited in: Mary M. Gedo (2013) Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art. p. 123
1870 - 1890

Pain , People , Fear , Hope

“To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me... Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat... 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

Claude Monet, in an interview, 1895; as quoted in: Paul Hayes Tucker et al. (eds). (1999) Monet in the Twentieth Century. London: Royal Academy of Arts/Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. As cited in: Steven Connor, " About There, or Thereabouts http://www.stevenconnor.com/aboutthere/aboutthere.pdf." talk given at the Catalysis conference on Space and Time, Downing College, Cambridge, 23rd March 2013.
1890 - 1900

Beauty , Painting , Housing

“There at the moment in Honfleur... Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously. There's lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful... I shall tell you I'm sending a flower picture to the exhibition at Rouen; there are very beautiful flowers at present.”

Claude Monet

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille; as cited in: Edward B. Henning, Cleveland Museum of Art. Creativity in art and science, 1860-1960. (1987), p. 95
1850 - 1870

Beauty , Flowers , Nature , Learning

“I hired a good carriage and had myself driven to Menton, a delightful outing of several hours. Menton is wonderful and is in a splendid setting. I walked to Cap Martin, a famous spot between Menton and Monte Carlo. I saw two motifs there that I want to paint because they are so different from things here, where the sea plays no big part in my studies, where the sea plays no big plays no big part in my studies.”

Claude Monet

in a letter to his second wife Alice Hoschedé, 1884; as cited in: Christoph Heinrich, Monet, (2000), p. 64
1870 - 1890

Study , Parting , Painting , Sea