Detail of The Garden at Sainte-Adresse by Monet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2009

Artist: Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)

Title: Garden at Sainte-Adresse

Date: 1867

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 38 5/8 x 51 1/8 in. (98.1 x 129.9 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Purchase, special contributions and funds given or bequeathed by friends of the Museum, 1967

Accession Number: 67.241

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...

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Claude Monet
French, 1840-1926

Garden at Saint-Adresse, 1867
Oil on canvas
Signed (lower right): Claude Monet

Accession Number: 67.241

Monet painted this canvas in the summer of 1867 in a Sainte-Adresse garden with a view of Honfleur at the horizon. The models were probably Monet’s father Adolphe, in the foreground; Monet’s cousin Jeanne Marguerite Lecadre at the garden fence; Dr. Adolphe Lecadre, her father; and perhaps Lecadre’s other daughter, Sophie, the woman seated in the foreground with her back to the viewer. Although this scene projects affluent domesticity, it is by no means a family portrait. Monet’s relations with his father were tense that summer, owing to family disapproval of the young artist’s liaison with his companion, Camielle Doncieux.

Monet called this work “the Chinese painting in which there are flags;” Renoir referred to it as “the Japanese painting with little flags.” In the 1860s, the composition’s flat horizontal bands of color would have reminded sophisticated viewers of Japanese color wood-block prints, which were avidly collected by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Whistler, and others in their circle. The print by the Japanese artist Hokusai that may have inspired this picture remains today at Monet’s house at Giverny.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.