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A family portrait seen from below
Claude Monet painted Woman with a Parasol: Madame Monet and Her Son in 1875. Camille Monet stands above us on a grassy rise, with their son Jean farther back on the left. The National Gallery of Art identifies both sitters and records the picture as oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm, accession 1983.1.29.[1]
The low viewpoint changes the encounter. We look up towards Camille, while the hill hides most of Jean's body. The sky occupies much of the picture, but Camille's dress provides its largest continuous light shape. Her face turns towards us beneath the parasol. The boy is smaller and farther away; his placement lets us read the slope as a space people occupy rather than a strip of green beneath a portrait.
Follow the yellow from the grass into the dress
Begin along the crest of the hill. The National Gallery describes the small yellow dabs as suggesting buttercups, with their colour reflected on Camille’s sleeve.[1] Look for the difference between the foreground marks that cross the lower skirt and the yellow within the sleeve itself.
Paul Hayes Tucker’s catalogue entry describes the supposedly white gown through yellow, violet and blue reflected tones.[2] Compare the blue-violet folds in detail 1 with the warmer sleeve in detail 2. The garment changes colour across the two passages; it is not represented by one uniform white.
Connect the two details
The numbered outlines mark the exact areas enlarged below: 1, grass and skirt, and 2, sleeve and veil. Follow the two links to compare the marks at a larger size.
Grass and skirt
Look along the hill’s crest for yellow marks, including those overlapping the blue-violet skirt. These foreground dabs should not all be read as yellow tint in the fabric. Return to the whole painting.
Sleeve, veil and parasol
The National Gallery describes dense white strokes on the back of the skirt and jacket catching the light.[1] In this reproduction, look at the jacket’s right edge for white strokes beside blue folds, then follow the bright marks lower down the back of the skirt. Compare these with the blue-grey veil above. Return to the whole painting.
Wind without a single arrow
The veil and skirt do not form one tidy diagram of the wind. Tucker describes the veil lifting behind Camille while the dress pulls around her in the opposite direction.[2] The sky contributes its own movement through varied brushmarks. Together these passages suggest disturbance across several surfaces: veil, dress and clouds.
What matters for looking is how Monet makes a still body sit inside an unsettled atmosphere.
Look for the canvas as well as the clouds
Tucker draws attention to areas of sky left uncovered, including the space below the parasol and a strip near the right edge between Camille's waist and the hill.[2]
The National Gallery explains the exposed canvas through the speed of Monet’s work: he left areas uncovered in his haste.[1] In his National Gallery catalogue entry, Tucker reads the visible support as an expressive choice that helps the picture appear spontaneous.[2]
From the parasol to the right edge
The outline shows where this detail was taken from the whole painting.
Trace the right-hand edge of the reproduced painting down from the height of Camille’s waist to the grass, then compare it with the sky beneath the parasol. Return to the whole painting.
Which woman with a parasol?
The two 1886 studies were painted eleven years after the 1875 family portrait.[1][3][4] The Musée d'Orsay identifies Suzanne Hoschédé as the sitter in both of its 1886 paintings.[3][4] Unlike the family portrait of 1875, each later canvas shows one woman.
Find Jean behind the hill in the 1875 painting. For the 1886 pair, follow the parasol shaft towards the hands: RF 2620 has a long, clearly visible straight diagonal rising from the hands into the canopy. In RF 2621, look for the curved handle projecting to the left of the figure. Then compare the faces: RF 2620 shows a clearer oval of the face, while fabric crosses the face in RF 2621. These are observations of the reproductions, so use the accession numbers beside the images to match them to the museum records.
1875: Camille and Jean
Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm. National Gallery of Art, 1983.1.29. [1]
1886: Suzanne, RF 2620
The museum titles this study Femme à l’ombrelle tournée vers la droite (woman with a parasol turned towards the right). Oil on canvas, 130.5 × 89.3 cm. Musée d’Orsay, RF 2620. [3]
View a larger reproduction of RF 2620.
Reproduction: Shonagon, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons.
1886: Suzanne, RF 2621
The museum titles this study Femme à l’ombrelle tournée vers la gauche (woman with a parasol turned towards the left). Oil on canvas, 131 × 88.7 cm. Musée d’Orsay, RF 2621. [4]
View a larger reproduction of RF 2621.
Reproduction: The Yorck Project, via Wikimedia Commons. File history records later colour adjustments.
The reproductions come from different sources. Use this comparison for composition and identification; their colours are not calibrated against each other. The linked file history for RF 2621 records colour adjustments.
Monet and Kühn: a comparison of viewpoints
In Looking at Monet, Stephan Koja compares the view from below in these three parasol paintings with Heinrich Kühn’s photographs of embankments and slopes. He names The Gust of Wind (1905) and Mary Warner and Edeltrude on a Hill Crest (1908) among his examples.[5]
Koja writes that Kühn’s views from below appear to refer to Monet’s paintings.[5] In the Monet painting here, the low viewpoint lets the hill conceal Jean while Camille stands against the sky.
Common questions
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Who are the woman and child?
Camille Monet and their son Jean, according to the National Gallery of Art.[1]
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Is the dress really white?
Tucker describes the “supposedly white” gown through yellow, violet and blue reflected tones.[2] Look at how its painted colour changes beside the grass and sky.
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Where is the 1875 painting?
It belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Use the museum's current object record for display information.[1]
Prints by Claude Monet are available. View the collection →
