Às margens do Sena, Bennecourt

The summer of 1868 was one of Claude Monet's worst. He was broke, unmarried, with a companion named Camille and a small son to feed, and his letters from that year speak of being turned out of an inn. Yet what he painted at the riverside village of Bennecourt is entirely calm. Camille sits on the bank in the shade, a little boat drawn up beside her, the far shore and its houses breaking up in the water into bright, separate dabs of paint. This loose, quick way of catching reflected light was still years from being called Impressionism, and still a thing critics mocked when Monet showed such work. He held on to the picture through the hard years, and it reached Chicago only decades later.