Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter, 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. These Claude Monet quotes will motivate you.
Best Claude Monet Quotes
- “To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” ~ Claude Monet
- “The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.” ~ Claude Monet
- “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.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Light is the most important person in the picture.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” ~ Claude Monet
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“I must have flowers, always, and always.” ~ Claude Monet
- “When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you – a tree, house, a field….Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.” ~ Claude Monet
- “All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.” ~ 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
- “Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that’s the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.” ~ 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
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“It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.” ~ Claude Monet
- “The real subject of every painting is light.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I would like to paint the way a bird sings.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Everything changes, even stone.” ~ Claude Monet
- “For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.” ~ Claude Monet
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“It is better to have done something than to have been someone.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Critic asks: ‘And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?’ – ‘The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.” ~ Claude Monet
- “the more I live, the more I regret how little I know” ~ Claude Monet
- “Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Color is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint.” ~ Claude Monet
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“What I need most of all is color, always, always.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Nature won’t be summoned to order and won’t be kept waiting. It must be caught, well caught.” ~ Claude Monet
- “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.” ~ Claude Monet
- “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece” ~ Claude Monet
- “My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” ~ Claude Monet
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“My work is always better when I am alone and follow my own impressions.” ~ 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
- “The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.” ~ Claude Monet
- “These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I didn’t become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.” ~ Claude Monet
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“My heart is forever in Giverny.” ~ Claude Monet
- “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.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I had so much fire in me and so many plans.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude…its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.” ~ Claude Monet
- “It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.” ~ Claude Monet
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“Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.” ~ Claude Monet
- “My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I’m enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.” ~ Claude Monet Quotes
- “I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.” ~ Claude Monet
- “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.” ~ Claude Monet
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“One can do something if one can see and understand it.” ~ Claude Monet
- “It was at home I learned the little I know. Schools always appeared to me like a prison, and never could I make up my mind to stay there, not even for four hours a day, when the sunshine was inviting, the sea smooth, and when it was joy to run about the cliffs in the free air, or to paddle in the water.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.” ~ Claude Monet
- “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at any moment.” ~ Claude Monet
- “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.” ~ 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, and I hope it will please you.” ~ Claude Monet
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“When I work I forget all the rest.” ~ Claude Monet
- “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.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Perhaps it’s true that I’m very hard on myself, but that’s better than exhibiting mediocre work… too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.” ~ Claude Monet
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“It’s the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one’s done.” ~ Claude Monet
- “I see less and less… I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up… I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.” ~ Claude Monet
- “All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.” ~ Claude Monet
- “My life has been nothing but a failure.” ~ Claude Monet
- “When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can’t think anymore.” ~ Claude Monet
- “Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.” ~ Claude Monet
- “A good impression is lost so quickly.” ~ Claude Monet
