Monet, Claude (1840-1926)
Jean Monet sur son cheval cheval de bois (Jean Monet on His Hobby Horse)
1872
Oil on canvas, 60.6 x 74.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Monet painted this picture of his elder son, Jean, in the summer of 1872, not long after the artist and his family returned to France from self-imposed exile during the Franco-Prussian War. Thanks to the efforts of the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, the painter’s finances had begun to improve, enabling the once-impoverished Monets to rent a house in Argenteuil, an agreeable suburb northwest of Paris. For this portrait, Monet posed the five-year-old Jean in the garden of their new home. Monet never exhibited the painting but kept it throughout his life. (MET)
See also:
• Argenteuil (France) | Monet, Jean (1867-1914)