Claude Monet
Founder of Impressionism, Water Lilies
Most quoted
"Try to forget what objects you have before you – a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you."
— from Advice to Lilla Cabot Perry
"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."
— from Interview, 1890
"I am working at a furious pace. I am afraid of the sun, afraid of the wind, afraid of the clouds, afraid of the rain, afraid of the fog, afraid of the frost, afraid of the snow."
— from Monet's letters
All quotes by Claude Monet (341)
I'm not a wise man, I'm an experienced man.
I'm not a young man, I'm an old man.
I'm not a dead man, I'm a living man.
I'm not a ghost, I'm a human.
I'm not a dream, I'm a reality.
I'm not a myth, I'm a man.
I'm not a philosopher, I'm a painter. I paint what I see, what I feel.
I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.
I'm working hard, I'm stuck to a canvas, I'm trying to capture the light.
I have painted for 60 years and I have never seen nature as it is, but always as I feel it.
The water lily pond is a small universe, a world in itself.
I am more and more convinced that one must be a child to see nature as it is.
I am still under the spell of the magic of the water lilies.
I want to paint the invisible, the intangible, the impalpable.
The light is always changing, and that is what I try to capture.
I am trying to paint the moment, the instant.
I am trying to paint the air, the atmosphere.
I am trying to paint the silence of nature.
I am trying to paint the infinite.
I am trying to paint the eternal.
Contemporaries of Claude Monet
Other Visual Artss born within 50 years of Claude Monet (1840–1926).