Claude Monet was a French painter who was a founder of the Imperialism movement in the 19th century Europe. Oscar-Claude Monet is regarded as one of the most prolific painters who were ardent supporters of the art of expressing one's perceptions before nature. He gained recognition due to his works in Impression, Sunrise, Rouen Cathedral series, London Parliament series, Water Lilies, Haystacks and Poplars. Claude Monet is considered as the pioneer of plein-air landscape type painting. It is a method of iterative paintings which documents the gradual change in singular landscape with the passage of time and seasons. In an auction in 2004, his artwork ‘London, the Parliament and Effects of Sun in the Fog’ went on to be sold at a whopping US$20.1 million. A couple of years later, his painting Le bassin aux nymphéas (from the water lilies series) went on to be sold at a record price of US$71 million. This placed him in the elite list of top 20 highest paid painters. Let’s browse through the following quotes from this French Imperialistic artist.
Try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. 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 you your own impression of the scene before you.
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.
It is extraordinary to see the sea; what a spectacle! She is so unfettered that one wonders whether it is possible that she again become calm.
Claude Monet
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 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.
I am working, but when one has ceased to do seascape, it is the devil afterward - very difficult; it changes at every instant, and here the weather varies several times in the same day.
It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
Claude Monet
For a long time, I have hoped for better days, but alas, today it is necessary for me to lose all hope. My poor wife suffers more and more. I do not think it is possible to be any weaker.
Etretat is becoming more and more amazing. Now is the real moment: the beach with all its fine boats; it is superb, and I am enraged not to be more skillful in rendering all this. I would need two hands and hundreds of canvases.
There, the grand lines of mountain and sea are admirable, and apart from the exotic vegetation that is here, Monte Carlo is certainly the most beautiful spot of the entire coast: the motifs there are more complete, more picturelike, and consequently easier to execute.
Claude Monet
I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.
