When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before youöa tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streakof yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.

-Monet, Claude
Attributed, in reminiscences written in1927 by the young American artist Lilla Cabot Perry.