Paul Cézanne on Claude Monet

“But what an eye Monet has, the most prodigious eye since painting began! I raise my hat to him. As for Courbet, he already had the image in his eye, ready-made. Monet used to visit him [Courbet], you know, in his early days.. ..But a touch of green, believe me, is enough to give us a landscape, just as a flesh tone will translate a face for us..”

“Monet's cliffs (in Etretat) will survive as a prodigious series, as will a hundred others of his canvases.. ..He'll be in the Louvre, for sure, alongside Constable and Turner. Damn it, he's even greater. He painted the iridescence of the earth. He's painted water. Remember those Rouen cathedrals (series of paintings of Monet of the Cathedral of Rouen).. .But where everything slips away in these pictures of Monet's, nowadays we must insert a solidity, a framework..”

“Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven’t at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.. .Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle.”