CLAUDE MONET: “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.”
PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: On Saturday, when I took this picture, spring became general. Until then there were only shoots from the soil and occasional spots along the hillsides where an occasional tree blushed, but Saturday on every hill I saw the faint unfurling of the painterly season climbing up to the ridge line. No leaf had fully opened, but each tree that had begun to wake dabbed color across the gray skeletal hillsides of winter. It was as if the spirit of Monet had just passed by. The frustrated painter in me is always drawn to such painterly display. No other season can match it.
