Femme à l'ombrelle tournée vers la gauche

Monet made two of these in 1886, one figure turned to the left, one to the right, both of a young woman standing in a breezy meadow at Giverny with a parasol. The model was Suzanne Hoschede, the daughter of the woman who would become his second wife. What is striking is that he left her face blank, barely more than a smudge under the hat. 11 years earlier he had painted his first wife Camille much the same way, parasol raised against the sky, but that had been a portrait. This time he wanted no person and no story, just a shape moving in wind and light, the grass and the clouds carrying as much weight as the figure. He never sold the pair and kept them at Giverny.