„But there is one very odd thing – to notice that basically a picture doesn’t change, that the first ‘vision’ remains almost intact, in spite of appearances. I often ponder on a light and a dark when I have put them into a painting; I try hard to break them up by interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I note that what I put in to correct my first vision has disappeared, and that, after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on.“

— Pablo Picasso

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„It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact“
— Pablo Picasso
„Colours no longer looked as brilliant to me as they use to do [Monet's sight was beginning to fail], I no longer painted shades of light so correctly. Reds looked muddy to me, pinks insipid, and the intermediate or lower notes in the colour scale escaped me. As for forms, I could see them as clear as ever, and render them as decisively. At first I tried pertinacity. How many times I have remained for hours near the little bridge, exactly were we are now, in the full glare of the sun, sitting on my camp-stool, under my sunshade, forcing myself to resume my interrupted task and to recapture the freshness my palette had lost! A waste of effort. What I painted was more and more mellow.... and (when) I compared it with what I used to do in the old days. I would fall into a frantic rage, and I slashed all my pictures with my penknife.“
— Claude Monet