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
The effect of sincerity is to give one's work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.
Manet wanted one day to paint my wife and children. Renoir was there. He took a canvas and began painting them, too. After a while, Manet took me aside and whispered, 'You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future - do advise him to give up painting! You can see for yourself that it's not his metier at all.
I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.
No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others.
My aim is to give you only the things with which I am completely satisfied, even if it means asking you a little more [time] for them... for if I were to do otherwise I'd turn into a mere painting machine and you would be landed with a pile of incomplete work which would put off the most enthusiastic of art collectors...
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. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.
I would advise young artists . . . to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly . . . . If their painting doesn't improve by itself, it means that nothing can be done - and I wouldn't do anything!
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her...I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.
I've always refused requests even from friends to employ a technique I know nothing about.
If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!
I'm going to get down to a still life on a size 50 canvas of rayfish and dogfish with old fishermen's baskets. Then I'm going to turn out a few pictures to send wherever possible, given that now, first and foremost - unfortunately - I have to earn some money.
One can do something if one can see and understand it...
You'll understand, I'm sure that I'm chasing the merest sliver of color. It's my own fault. I want to grasp the intangible. It's terrible how the light runs out. Color, any color, lasts a second, sometimes 3 or 4 minutes at most...