1. “People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.”
2. “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!”
3. “It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.”
4. “We’re having marvelous weather and I wish I could send you a little of the sunshine. I am slaving away on six paintings a day. I’m giving myself a hard time over it as I haven’t yet managed to capture the color of this landscape, there are moments when I’m appalled at the colors I’m having to use, I’m afraid what I’m doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying.”
5. “No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.”
6. “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.”
7. “I am completely absorbed by my work. These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. They are beyond the strength of an old man, and yet I am determined to set down what I feel. I have destroyed some…I have begun others over again…and I hope that something will come of so much effort.”
8. “I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot; and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.”
9. “I am following Nature without being able to grasp her… I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”
10. “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

Related posts:

1. Water Lilies Painted by Claude Monet
2. A Brief Idea Of Impressionism Oil Paintings
3. A Short Post on the Art Auction for Claude Monet’s Nymphéas

Traditional landscape compositions usually consist of perspective and the horizon from afar; the dramatic clouds above, and the land with people, housing, mountains, etc. The artwork is easily understood and to appreciate, as within one’s eye-level who tend to see distant objects in a panoramic aspects.

In Monet’s water lilies, he has a different approach to landscaping. In 1895 he began to paint waterscapes, a practice he continued until his death. After the completion of the Japanese Bridge series (1899 – 1901) he enlarged the pond, using it for both the series of water lilies made between 1903 and 1908, and for his later ‘decorations’, on which he devoted the closing years of his life.

His work on water lilies has abandoned any reference to the banks of the pond, concentrating instead on the water and plants. The surfaces of the painting and of the pool merge into one. The top of the composition bulges with lilies, while the water reads as both an illusion of depth and a reflection of nearby trees and distant sky.

The effect is to invert the composition, and in doing so Monet has overturned the tradition expectation of landscape painting, namely the inclusion of the horizon line and perspective. When forty-eight of these works were shown at Durand-Ruel in 1999, guests enjoyed a favorable critical reception, with analogies being drawn between the paintings and music and poetry.

Related posts:

1. 10 Most Beautiful Quotes from Claude Monet
2. A Short Post on the Art Auction for Claude Monet’s Nymphéas
3. A Brief Idea Of Impressionism Oil Paintings