Frau im Garten

Monet was 26 when he painted this in the garden of a family house at Sainte-Adresse, on the coast near Le Havre. The woman is Jeanne-Marguerite Lecadre, the young wife of his cousin, caught mid-step among the flower beds with her face half turned away and half lost under a summer hat. This is early Monet, and it is more careful and composed than the loose, flickering style he became famous for later. The strongest thing in it is the light: he lets the sun fall hard across the path and the white dress, so the shadows go sharp and blue. Years later the picture entered the collection of the Moscow merchant Sergei Shchukin, and it reached the Hermitage in 1930.