Here we have Claude Monet’s wife Camille Monet on a Garden Bench portrayed in dark colours of mourning. She looks out at the viewer with a sad expression of resignation.
The picture was painted in 1873, the year of Camille Doncieux’s father’s death. A man also in dark dress leans over the bench while in the background a woman with a parasol stands near a bed of geraniums. The scene seems to be thematically split between the glorying in light and color in the background and the funereal mood in the foreground. There is a recognition of loss but also consolation.
Claude Monet’s Camille Monet on a Garden Bench in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, United States.