I was definitely born under an evil star. I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm.
— Claude Monet
I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful.
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.
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.
I pass my time in the open air on the beach when it is really heavy weather or when the boats go out fishing.
Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
My life has been nothing but a failure.
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Among the seascapes, I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbor covered with small sails.
My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.
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.
I will do water - beautiful, blue water.
I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.
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.
I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.
