Il bambino con la tazza

1868 was a wretched year for Claude Monet. He was broke and unknown, with a companion, Camille, and a baby son, Jean, born the previous August, to feed. What kept them afloat were commissions from Louis-Joachim Gaudibert, a shipowner on the Normandy coast who took the young painter in near Etretat. In that fragile stretch Monet painted his infant son beside a blue-and-white striped cup. Look at the head: it is built up in blunt, loaded strokes, far livelier than the quiet earth-brown background around it. He signed and dated it plainly in the corner, C. Monet 68, a small domestic picture from a year when almost nothing else was going right.