Claude Monet

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”

“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

“Among the seascapes, I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbor covered with small sails.”

“I am working, but when one has ceased to do seascape, it is the devil afterward - very difficult; it changes at every instant, and here the weather varies several times in the same day.”

“חיי לא היו אלא כישלון.”

“אינני יכול עוד לעבוד בחוץ, בגלל עוצמת האור.”

“הצבע מעסיק אותי מדי יום ביומו באופן בלעדי; הוא מהווה את יסוריי ואת שמחתי.”

“איש אינו צייר, אלא אם כן הוא נושא את התמונה בראשו לפני שהוא מצייר אותה.”

“אני עוקב אחר הטבע, אך אינני מסוגל לתפוס אותו; אולי אני חייב לפרחים את העובדה שאני צייר.”

“כל אחד מדבר על אודות אמנותי, ומתיימר להבינה כאילו היה צורך להבין, בעוד שיש צורך פשוט לאהוב.”

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

“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, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.”

“I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful.”

“I was definitely born under an evil star. I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm.”

“It is extraordinary to see the sea; what a spectacle! She is so unfettered that one wonders whether it is possible that she again become calm.”

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

“Etretat is becoming more and more amazing. Now is the real moment: the beach with all its fine boats; it is superb, and I am enraged not to be more skillful in rendering all this. I would need two hands and hundreds of canvases.”

“I will do water - beautiful, blue water.”

“There, the grand lines of mountain and sea are admirable, and apart from the exotic vegetation that is here, Monte Carlo is certainly the most beautiful spot of the entire coast: the motifs there are more complete, more picturelike, and consequently easier to execute.”

“For a long time, I have hoped for better days, but alas, today it is necessary for me to lose all hope. My poor wife suffers more and more. I do not think it is possible to be any weaker.”