"To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at."
"I see less and less... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf."
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Source: Monet in the 20th Century. Book by Paul Hayes Tucker, 1998.
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More quotes by Claude Monet
"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
"I must have flowers, always, and always."
"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
"When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....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 your own naive impression of the scene before you."
"Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows."