A biography for Claude Monethasn’t been written yet.
“Finally here is a beautiful day, a superb sun like at Giverny. So I worked without stopping, for the tide at this moment is just as I need it for several motifs. This has bucked me up a bit.”
“Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.”
“I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.”
“I must have flowers, always and always.”
“No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.”
“I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.”
“What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”
“My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.”
“I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made.”
“I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”
“I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.”
“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.”
“My life has been nothing but a failure.”
“I pass my time in the open air on the beach when it is really heavy weather or when the boats go out fishing.”