All I Did Was To Look At

I Intend To Do A Large Painting Of The Cliff At Etretat, Although It Is Terribly Bold Of Me To Do So After Courbet Has Painted It So Admirably, But I Will Try To Do It In A Different Way.

When You Go Out To Paint, Try To Forget What Objects You Have Before You - A Tree, House, A Field....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 Your Own Naive Impression Of The Scene Before You.

As For Myself, I Met With As Much Success As I Ever Could Have Wanted. In Other Words, I Was Enthusiastically Run-down By Every Critic Of The Period.

I'm In A Foul Mood As I'm Making Stupid Mistakes... This Morning I Lost Beyond Repair A Painting With Which I Had Been Happy, Having Done About Twenty Sessions On It; It Had To Be Thoroughly Scraped Away... What A Rage I Was In!

I Do What I Can To Convey What I Experience Before Nature And Most Often, In Order To Succeed In Conveying What I Feel, I Totally Forget The Most Elementary Rules Of Painting, If They Exist That Is.