Monet, Claude (1840-1926)
Bazille et Camille, Etude pour “Déjeuner sur l’Herbe” (Bazille and Camille, Study for “Déjeuner sur l’Herbe”)
1865
Oil on canvas, 93 x 68.9 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
A woman wearing a long, slate-gray gown walks with a man wearing a suit and cap in a woodland setting in this vertical painting. Both people have pale, peach-colored skin. The scene is loosely painted so many of the details are indistinct. The woman walks away from us, angled to our right so we see her right cheek and the tip of her straight nose. Her lips are parted, and her dark hair is pulled back into a bun under a silvery-gray hat that curves over her head. The long-sleeved bodice is embellished with swirling black lines across the back of the neck, down along the arms and backs of the shoulders, and around the bottom. Her full skirt has a short train that trails behind her along the dirt path. To our left, a man stands with his body angled toward the woman, and us. He has short, dark hair under a rounded, brimmed, gray cap. His long sideburns connect with his full beard and mustache. The eye we can see is a dab of pale blue paint, and he looks at the woman. He wears a navy-blue jacket over a white, collared shirt and white bowtie, and charcoal-gray pants. He reaches his left hand, farther from us, toward the woman, and he holds a short stick or staff in his other hand. Strokes of white on the dirt path suggest dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, which fill the rest of the composition. Leaves are created with swipes of celery and sage green, and trunks with lines of dark brown. A few touches of baby blue at the top center of the painting suggest a patch of sky through the dense canopies. The artist signed the lower right corner, “Claude Monet.”
Monet’s future wife Camille Doncieux, and his friend, painter Frédéric Bazille, posed for this painting. The artist recorded his observations of the scene in this preparatory study for a much larger work. He applied paint quickly with short, energetic strokes, roughly sketching out the landscape. The light streams through the tree branches overhead, dappling the ground. And Monet paid careful attention to the effects of sunlight on clothing. Although intended as a reference for his final composition, this sketch has a vitality all its own. (NGA)
See also:
• Bazille, Frédéric (1841-1870) | Doncieux, Camille (1847-1879)