Claude Monet — "I'm struggling, I'm fighting, I'm working like a madman, but I'm not getting any…"

"I found my eyes fixed on the tragic countenance, mechanically trying to seek the sequence, the degradation of the colours that death had just imposed on the motionless face. Shades of blue, yellow, gr…"

"City life doesn't really suit me."

"I was flattered by your two letters, as I have the deepest admiration for Japanese art and a great liking for the Japanese people […]. It is with the greatest pleasure that I received your pretty prin…"

"I'm absolutely fed up with painting. I'm going to give it all up."

"Dear God, this cursed Cathedral is hard to do… Fourteen paintings on the go today… I'm exhausted and it seems that every day the light changes: it gets whiter and higher up."