Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

This tall strip of canvas, more than four metres high, is the left-hand end of the enormous picnic scene Monet worked on in 1865 and 1866. The figures are life-size. A man in a dark suit and hat stands holding a cane, and two women in wide, full-skirted dresses are seen mostly from behind, one in grey trimmed with red, the other in pale fawn, with sunlight falling through the leaves above them. In 1884, after damp had ruined parts of it, the painter cut the canvas up. This section stayed with his family, went in 1931 to the art dealer Georges Wildenstein, and in 1957 Wildenstein gave it to the French state. The Louvre put it on show that year under a title announcing an unknown masterpiece by Monet. The central section, the one with the picnic cloth, did not join it in the national collection until 1987.