Oscar-Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 in Rue Laffitte, Paris, France. He was a renowned 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.
Claude Monet’s ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. He began painting the water lilies in 1899, which is the subjects of his best-known works. Claude Monet died on December 5, 1926 in Giverny, France.
Below, you will find a collection of quotes about art, painting and life from the famous French painter Claude Monet.
37 Claude Monet Quotes About Art, Life & Paintings
“When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. 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.”― Claude Monet
“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”― 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
“I would like to paint the way a bird sings.”― 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
“The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. ”― Claude Monet
“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”― Claude Monet
“No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself…”― 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
“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
“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
Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.― Claude Monet
I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.― Claude Monet
No, I’m not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet. ― Claude Monet
One can do something if one can see and understand it…― Claude Monet
Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule.― Claude Monet
I can only draw what I see. ― 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 noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.― Claude Monet
“I must have flowers, always, and always.”― Claude Monet
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”― Claude Monet
“the more I live, the more I regret how little i know”― Claude monet
“I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint…”― Claude Monet
“Everyday 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
“I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.”― Claude Monet
“If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!”― Claude Monet
“I get madder and madder on giving back what I feel.”― Claude Monet
“Water Lilies’ is an extension of my life. Without the water the lilies cannot live, as I am without art.”― Claude Monet
“The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment.”
― Claude Monet
― Claude Monet
My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.― Claude Monet
I despise the opinion of the press and the so-called critics.― 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 only good at two things, and those are: gardening and painting. ― Claude Monet
Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.― Claude Monet
Everything I have earned has gone into these gardens.― Claude Monet
No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition. ― Claude Monet