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
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.
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.
The real subject of every painting is light.
One day I am satisfied, the next day I find it all bad; still I hope that some day I will find some of them good.
My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.
I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.
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.
Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.
I'm in fine fettle and fired with a desire to paint.
I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.
Work is nearly always a torture. If I could find something else I would be much happier, because I could use this other interest as a form of relaxation. Now I cannot relax.
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.
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.