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Woman with an umbrella (Camilla Monet and son Jean)

Claude Monet • Painting, 1875, 100×81 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Landscape, Portrait, Genre scene
Style of art: Impressionism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1875
Size: 100×81 cm
Artwork in selections: 275 selections

Description of the artwork «Woman with an umbrella (Camilla Monet and son Jean)»

Claude Monet honestly admitted that besides painting and gardening, he was no longer fit for anything. And perhaps the worst thing was he managed the role of her husband, especially for the first time.

Camille Monet was one of the most unhappy and sad women in the entire history of the picturesque heroines and wives of artists. 18-year-old model Camilla Donsier, daughter of a merchant, posed for young handsome Monet for a picture “Woman in Green”, one of the most successful and rapidly become famous. The picture was not only accepted at the Salon, but also received several flattering reviews. Camille is pleased, Monet is happy, they are young, in love and it seems to them that everything beautiful in their life is just beginning.

The next few desperate years, Camilla and Claude live in damp, cold rooms, often without light and heating, and very often without food. It happens that Renoircomes to visit them to write with Claude (including - and Camille), and brings some bread - enough for a few days. Sometimes in the middle of the night they collect things and flee from another rural house, knowing that in the morning they will not be able to pay the owner a debt for several months. Claude works from morning till night, like an obsessed person, receiving neither approval in the official Salon nor recognition among customers. His paintings are not bought. At least for 30, for 50 francs - he is ready to get any penny. When Camille comes to give birth, Monet will leave to seek inspiration - not very much like crazy love.

From afar, he will beg in letters Frederic Basilsend hungry Camille money, appealing to his philanthropy, and returning for a while, almost with surprise, finds that the child really pleases him. Having learned about his mistress, the father and aunt Monet, are denied maintenance and demand to abandon both the beloved and the newborn son.

Claude writes to Camille excitedly, constantly- and in almost all portraits in Camille's eyes there is such a bottomless abyss and such irreparable sadness that it can be identified among the artist's models precisely by this hopelessness. She will die at 32, in 1879, in terrible torment, another woman will take care of her during a serious illness, Alice Oschede, which by then will be in Monet’s house to feel like a full-fledged mistress.

More than 10 years will pass - and the ghost of Camille with an umbrella Monet accidentally sees, returning in the evening after an open air in his garden in Giverny. On the mound, against the backdrop of a huge sky, stood his stepdaughter Susanne. "Poured Camilla in Argenteuil! We’ll come here tomorrow, you will pose for me! ”

He puts Suzanne in the right position, forbidding to move and chasing the ghost of Camilla who has long gone beyond the horizon. In rage, he kicks one of two sketches (1, 2), tears the canvas, Susanne faints from the heat, Monet in despair - he does not succeed. A woman with an umbrella turned to the left, and a woman with an umbrella turned to the right, does not see her face. Critics unanimously say that these are masterpieces, compared to the first picture painted in Argenteuil, more dynamic, perfectly balanced, expertly executed and creating a sense of picturesque integrity. But when you see all three nearby, it is difficult to escape the thought that the faceless, right and left women frozen in the right poses are two motionless ghosts of that light, suddenly turned to the artist, anxious, still alive, but ready to hide behind Camilla's hill.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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