Claude Monet was is considered the leading figure in the Impressionism art movement. He was born in Paris on the 14th of November, 1840.
Like most modern artists at the time his work was rejected by the established art world and it would be several years before he would be considered an established artist.
The majority of paintings by Monet were of landscape scenes in which he sought to capture the essence of the scene and how it’s relationship with light would change over the seasons and even at different times of the day.
This would result in him painting the same scenes over and over again, often working on several canvases throughout the day.
Here are some interesting quotes by Claude Monet on his life and his art:
Claude Monet Quotes
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”
– Claude Monet
“I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint…”
– Claude Monet
“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”
– Claude Monet
“I must have flowers, always, and always.”
Claude Monet
“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment.”
– Claude Monet
“Now I really feel the landscape. I can be bold and include every tone of pink and blue: it’s enchanting, it’s delicious.”
– Claude Monet
“Aside from painting and gardening, I am good for nothing.”
– Claude Monet
“Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.”
– Claude Monet
“Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.“
– Claude Monet
“I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.“
– Claude Monet
“My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.“
– Claude Monet
“I am following Nature without being able to grasp her… I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.“
– Claude Monet
“It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.“
– Claude Monet
“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.”
– Claude Monet
“It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”
– Claude Monet
“I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.“
– Claude Monet
“Impression — I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”
– Claude Monet
“The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment.“
– Claude Monet
“It took me time to understand my waterlilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.”
– Claude Monet
“The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre.“
– Claude Monet
“I’m hard at it, working stubbornly on a series of different effects (grain stacks), but at this time of the year the sun sets so fast that it’s impossible to keep up with it….“
– Claude Monet
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