Camille sitting on the beach at Trouville

In October 1875 this small canvas left Monet's hands and went to a poet. Émile Blémont, born Léon-Émile Petitdidier, ran a literary review in Paris, and he is one of the men standing in Henri Fantin-Latour's group portrait Un coin de table, where Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud sit at the table. Blémont bought this picture straight from the artist, five years after it was painted on the beach at Trouville in the summer of 1870. Camille sits on the sand under a parasol, with the sea and a scatter of sails behind her. The canvas stayed with Blémont's family until 1959, when it passed through the dealers Wildenstein to Jacques Guerlain, the Paris perfumer. Much later it belonged to Peggy and David Rockefeller, who bought it at auction in New York in 2000.