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"In painting, everyone is someone's master or pupil, according to whether you are old or young, or more or less an establishment figure. When you do not have genius and the less you have, you take your revenge by professing mediocrity on others' account. You become that impudent and comical figure, an art master. To transmit the fixed laws of the beautiful theoretically, mechanically, from generation to generation; to teach a method for being moved, in a correct and stereotyped fashion, by a patch of nature, transformed into a topic for scholastic chatter, as one learns to measure lengths of silk or to make boots, seems at first sight, an absurd profession. Yet none is held in greater esteem, none is better remunerated. The master stakes his pride on having the most students, the student who can most faithfully copy a master, who in his own turn copied his own master, who had already copied another. And so it goes back, from pupil to master, into the mists of time. This unbroken chain of people copying one another over time, we call tradition. It is infinitely respected. It has schools, institutes, and ministries; the whole social and political organism functions around it. Governments, whatever their complexion, patronize it and see that it is officially preserved and rewarded, and that no unfortunate accident occurs to break it seamless continuity.
With Claude Monet, we are far from tradition. One of his most original features is that he has never been anyone's pupil. He appears in exhibition and sales catalogues under his own mane, without the accolade of any master."1
In reference to Monet's part in Givernois society and entertaining and parties, Monet found it disturbing. He was a very private man.
"One day an extremely young man came to ask Claude Monet to take him on as a pupil. "I do not teach painting," the artist answered, "I simply practice it, and I assure you that I don't have too much time even for that. As for my brushes, I wash them myself. Furthermore, since time immemorial, there always has been and always will be only one teacher- and one strangely heedless of all our artistic theories…" And he gestured towards the sky, its light enfolding fields and meadows, streams and hillsides."2
"Hectored as he was by requests for painting lessons, which he refused absolutely ever to give. This was the man, after all, who had yelled to his friends in the Gleyre studio: "Let's get out of here; the place is unhealthy!" At first hospitable to new arrivals, he finally shut his doors to all but a select few: Robinson, Beckwith, Hart and, later, Theodore Butler."3
1Kapos, Martha Editor, The Impressionists A Retrospective, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. 1991 pg.248
2Kapos, Martha Editor The Impressionists A Retrospective Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. 1991 pg.247
3Joyes, Claire Claude Monet Life At Giverny The Vendome Press, New York 1985 pg 57
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