Claude Monet: Quotes about painting

Claude Monet was French impressionist painter. Explore interesting quotes on painting.
Claude Monet: 174 quotes250 likes

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

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

“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.

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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. &quot; Monet&#x27;s Series: Repetition, Obsession http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/778519.&quot; October (1986): 65-75. <br class="br">1920 - 1926

“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

“[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

“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

“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

“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

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

Claude Monet

Quote of 1871, in Monet&#x27;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 <br class="br">1870 - 1890

“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

“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, &quot; About There, or Thereabouts http://www.stevenconnor.com/aboutthere/aboutthere.pdf.&quot; talk given at the Catalysis conference on Space and Time, Downing College, Cambridge, 23rd March 2013. <br class="br">1890 - 1900