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 am more and more convinced that one must paint what one sees, and not what one thinks one sees.
I am trying to render the impossible.
I am trying to capture the instantaneous, above all the envelope, the same light diffused over everything.
The motif is insignificant; it is the light that matters.
I am trying to paint the light, and not the object.
I want to paint the way a bird sings.
I am simply trying to reproduce what I see, with the greatest possible fidelity.
I have painted for fifty years, and I have never stopped learning.
I am still learning, and I am still struggling.
I am trying to give an impression of what I feel before nature.
I am trying to paint the ephemeral, the fleeting moment.
I am trying to paint the atmosphere, the light, the air.
I am trying to paint the sensation, not the object.
I am trying to paint the impression, not the reality.
I am trying to paint the invisible, the intangible.
I am trying to paint the soul of the landscape.
I am trying to paint the music of nature.
I am trying to paint the poetry of light.
I am trying to paint the mystery of nature.
I am trying to paint the emotion of the moment.
Contemporaries of Claude Monet
Other Visual Artss born within 50 years of Claude Monet (1840–1926).