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
One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.
Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.
My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.
I've said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.
I can no longer work outside because of the intensity of the light.
You might perhaps like to see the few canvases I was able to save from the bailiffs and the rest, since I thought you might be so good as to help me a little, as I am in quite a desperate state, and the worst is that I can no longer even work.
I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.
What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.
The creditors are proving impossible to deal with and short of a sudden appearance on the scene of wealthy art patrons, we are going to be turned out of this dear little house where I led a simple life and was able to work so well. I do not know what will become of us...
I know well enough in advance that you'll find my paintings perfect. I know that if they are exhibited they'll be a great success, but I couldn't be more indifferent to it since I know they are bad, I'm certain of it.
One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here [in Etretat] will at least have the merit of being unlike anyone else, at least I believe so, because it will simply be the expression of what I, and only I, have felt.
I'm knocked out, I've never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I'm quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy...
I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but... I'm increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I'm praying that I'll have a few more good years left to me...
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.