Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monetwas a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth14 November 1840
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.
For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.
I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.
Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.
I would love to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but I cannot find them the way I want them.
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.
I still don't know where I am going to sleep tomorrow.
One day I am satisfied, the next day I find it all bad; still I hope that some day I will find some of them good.
The real subject of every painting is light.
If only the weather would improve, there'd be hope of some work, but every day brings rain.
My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.
Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax.
The older I become the more I realize of that I have to work very hard to reproduce what I search: the instantaneous. The influence of the atmosphere on the things and the light scattered throughout.
I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.