"To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at."
"I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible."
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Source: Claude Monet (1985). “Monet: a retrospective”
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"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."