Quotes by Monet:
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”
“I can only draw what I see.”
“Everything I have earned has gone into these gardens.”
“Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”
"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.”
“I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.”
“It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”
"I've 20 or so canvases well under way, stunning seascapes, figures and gardens, something of everything in fact."
"We're having marvelous weather and I wish I could send you a little of the sunshine. I am slaving away on six paintings a day. I'm giving myself a hard time over it as I haven't yet managed to capture the color of this landscape, there are moments when I'm appalled at the colors I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying."
"Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it's enchanting, it's delicious."
"I'll look in a sorry state when I get home; my clothes have faded in the sun."
"I've caught this magical landscape and it's the enchantment of it that I'm so keen to render. Of course lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal, but that's just too bad."
"I was hard at work beneath the cliff, well sheltered from the wind ... convinced that the tide was drawing out I took no notice of the waves which came and fell a few feet away from me. In short, absorbed as I was, I didn't see a huge wave coming; it threw me against the cliff and I was tossed about in its wake along with all my materials! ... the palette which I had kept a good grip on had been knocked over my face and my beard was covered in blue, yellow etc ... the worst of it was that I lost my painting which was very soon broken up along with my easel, bag etc. Impossible to fish anything out."
"I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones."
"The Thames was all gold. God it was beautiful, so fine that I began working a frenzy, following the sun and its reflections on the water."
"These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession."
"I received the spectacles from Germany and much to my surprise the results are very good. I can see green again, red and, at last an attenuated blue."
"The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects."
