Claude Monet

In 1875 these two men were close friends and nearly broke. Their first group show the year before had been mocked, and an auction of their work that spring at the Hotel Drouot in Paris ended in jeers and pitiful prices. Renoir painted Monet here in his working clothes, palette and brushes in hand, caught mid-thought as if he had just glanced up from a canvas. Behind his head a spray of oleander leans in, so that Renoir seems half to be crowning his friend with leaves. The two often set up their easels side by side in these years, painting the same gardens and rivers. Emile Zola, seeing this portrait at the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876, said the work was worthy of Rembrandt.