I Am Following Nature Without Being

This passage is drawn from a letter in which Monet describes the frustration of trying to capture the Epte river near Giverny, which changed level, color, and character day by day. The longer excerpt reveals genuine despair: he writes of being unable to grasp nature, of the water shrinking and swelling, green one day and yellow the next, and begs his correspondent for comfort. It is one of many letters that document how Monet's apparently effortless canvases were in fact the product of grinding effort — he often worked on a dozen paintings simultaneously to match changing conditions, and destroyed hundreds he considered failures.