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
My life has been nothing but a failure.
I'm quite content: although what I'm doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same...
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.
It's enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience.
I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics.
I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.
Listening only to my instincts, I discovered superb things.
I never draw except with brush and paint...
I'm not lacking for enthusiasm as you can see, given that I have something like 65 canvases covered with paint and I'll be needing more since the place is quite out of the ordinary; so I'm going to order some more canvases...
Thanks to my work everything's going well; it's a great consolation.
I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me...
I'm in a foul mood as I'm making stupid mistakes... This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away... what a rage I was in!
I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant.
It is difficult to stop in time because one gets carried away. But I have that strength; it is the only strength I have.