8 April 2024

Recording

Zoom lecture

Camille Monet

The first Muse of Impressionism

with Chris Boïcos

Camille Doncieux (1847-1879) worked as an artist’s model when she first met Claude Monet in Paris in March 1865. She became the great love of his life and the only woman or figure he consistently painted in his entire career. Though they lived together from 1867 they could not, for financial reasons, marry until 1870. The illicit relationship caused great tension between Monet and his family and the artist had to pretend to have broken up with Camille after she became pregnant with their first child, Jean, in 1868.

Camille posed for many of Monet’s iconic paintings of his early career, including Luncheon on the Grass (1865-66), Women in a Garden (1866), The Poppies (1873) and Woman with a Parasol (1875). She accompanied Monet on his painting excursions on the river Seine, where she was depicted by Edouard Manet in Monet’s studio boat, and posed also on several occasions for both Manet and Renoir.

Her health deteriorated after the birth of her second son, Michel, in 1878 and she died, apparently of cancer, in September 1879. Monet’s last portrait of her on her deathbed, today in the Musée d’Orsay, is one of his most personal and moving paintings.