Claude Monet

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

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

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

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.

Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it's enchanting, it's delicious.

I've caught this magical landscape and it's the enchantment of it that I'm so keen to render. Of course lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal, but that's just too bad.

I would advise young artists . . . to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly . . . . If their painting doesn't improve by itself, it means that nothing can be done - and I wouldn't do anything!
- All from Claude Monet, 1840 - 1926

About:

Oscar-Claude Monet was born at Paris on 14 Nov in 1840. His father wanted him to enter the family grocery business but he knew at a very early age he wanted to be an artist, he was selling charcoal caricatures by the time he was twelve. When he was twenty he returned to Paris and fell in with several artists who were defining Impressionism, but soon went into the Army and served in Algeria for two years before contracting typhoid. After that, through good times and bad, he kept his eyes open and painted what he saw.