“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update March 9, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I tell myself that anyone who says he has finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. Finished means complete, perfect, and…" by Claude Monet?
Claude Monet photo
Claude Monet 87
French impressionist painter 1840–1926

Related quotes

Ingmar Bergman photo

“Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death — this infantile fixation of mine — was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry — with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Interview with Charles Thomas Samuels (1971).

“After all this running away from finished things, I ran into myself as a finished thing. And I’m still running away from finished things.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Después de tanto huir de las cosas hechas, me he encontrado yo mismo una cosa hecha. Y sigo huyendo de las cosas hechas.
Voces (1943)

Mary McCarthy photo

“[T]he labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"The Vita Activa", p. 158. First published in The New Yorker (18 October 1958)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Albert Marquet photo

“It has happened that I have begun a canvas in a brilliant tonality, going on to finish it in a grey notation. (1898)”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

As quoted by J. E. Müller, Le Fauvisme, Paris, Hazan, 1956, p. 92

Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

“If you leave me naked and waiting on the bed without making love to me, I’ll—” I didn’t get to finish the threat. I think it was the word “naked,” though maybe it was “bed,” but before I finished my sentence, he was on me. Mercy to Adam”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

“I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

Source: 1950s, Artists' Session at Studio 35, (1950), p. 213

Coretta Scott King photo

“Because his task was not finished, I felt that I must re-dedicate myself to the completion of his work.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., Revised Edition (1969/1993)

Nasreddin photo

“Mulla, Mulla, my son has written from the Abode of Learning to say that he has completely finished his studies!”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

"Console yourself, madam, with the thought that God will no doubt send him more."
Idries Shah, The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin (1973), ISBN 0525473548, p. 134

“I am complete but I'm not finished.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 155

Related topics