The Red Kerchief (Portrait of Madame Monet)

Monet painted this portrait of his wife Camille over several years in the late 1860s and early 1870s. He worked on it in his studio in Paris and possibly at his house in Argenteuil, returning to the canvas multiple times to adjust the surface. The painting is sometimes called The Red Cape or The Red Kerchief, and it shows Camille walking past a window in the snow. A woman in a red scarf walks past a window, her body turned away from the viewer, her face in profile. She wears a dark coat with the red scarf draped over her head and shoulders. Outside the window, the landscape is covered in snow, with bare trees and a low wall visible. The light from the snow fills the room, and the red of the scarf is the brightest color in the painting, a single warm note against the cool whites and greys of the winter scene. Monet painted Camille frequently in the 1860s and 1870s. She was his model, his companion, and eventually his wife, and she appears in dozens of his paintings. She died in 1879 at the age of 32, and Monet stopped painting figures almost entirely after her death. This portrait is one of the most personal of his paintings of her, and the fact that she is walking away from the viewer, her face in profile, gives it a melancholy that is unusual in Monet's work. The painting is sometimes dated to 1868-69, when Monet was living at Etretat, and sometimes to the early 1870s, when he was at Argenteuil. The Cleveland Museum of Art, which owns the painting, dates it broadly to 1868-73. Monet may have started it in 1868 and returned to it years later, which would explain the multiple layers of paint visible on the surface. Monet was born in Paris in 1840 and grew up in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1859 and studied at the Academie Suisse, where he met Pissarro and Cezanne. He painted with Renoir and Sisley in the 1860s, and the group developed the style that came to be called Impressionism. Monet's paintings of the 1860s are less well known than his later work, but they include some of his most ambitious figure paintings, including this portrait and the large Dejeuner sur l'herbe. Oil on canvas, 99 by 79 centimeters, roughly 39 by 31 inches. Monet painted with a textured surface, building the snow in thick layers of white and blue. The red scarf is painted in thick strokes of vermilion and red lake, the warmest color in the painting. Camille's face is rendered in profile, with her features barely indicated against the dark coat. The vertical format and winter subject make this print work well in a living room, bedroom, or hallway with cool-toned walls. The single red note in the painting makes it a striking image from a distance. A white frame keeps the painting's snow palette clear. The 12x16 or 16x20 size gives the figure and the snow enough detail to appreciate up close. The painting is in the Cleveland Museum of Art. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.