The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil

In the spring of 1874 about 30 artists, Monet and Renoir among them, hung their own exhibition in a photographer's studio on the Boulevard des Capucines, and a hostile reviewer gave them the name Impressionists. Manet, the older painter they all looked to, had refused to take part. He still wanted the official Salon.

That July he moved into his family's house at Gennevilliers, just across the Seine from Monet at Argenteuil, and spent the summer painting outdoors in the manner he had declined to endorse. Camille Monet sits on the grass with seven-year-old Jean. Monet is behind them in his smock, tending the flowers. Renoir turned up as Manet was starting, borrowed canvas and paints from Monet, and painted the same pair from a few feet away. A cock, a hen and a chick line up in the left foreground.