Camille in the green dress

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Camille in a Green Dress (Claude Monet)
Camille in the green dress
Claude Monet , 1866
Oil on canvas
231 × 151 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen

Camille in the Green Dress , also known as Camille or The Lady in the Green Dress , is a portrait paintedby Claude Monet in 1866 . Thepicture,231 centimeters high and 151 centimeters wide,painted in oil on canvas, shows Monet's future wife, Camille Doncieux , wearing an ensemble of a green dress and jacket. Monet submitted the picture to the Paris Salon of 1866, where it met with critical acclaim and was a particular success for him. Today the portrait belongs to the collection of the Bremen Kunsthalle .

Image description

Camille in the green dress is a life-size portrait . Camille wears a green and black striped silk dress , over which a black jacket trimmed with fur . The dress in emerald green corresponded to the fashion of the time with the contrasting vertical stripes. Yellowish leather gloves and a dark capote adorned with feathers serve as accessories . Camille wears her hair in a knot at the nape of the neck, tied with black ribbons. A dark red, almost black curtain forms the background of the picture.

Through the composition of the picture, Monet succeeded in conveying movement. The train of the dress is cut off at the left edge of the picture, causing a movement in this direction that extends beyond the edge of the picture. Liveliness is also created through the play of the folds of the skirt. The slightly backward-facing position of the head represents a moment of pause in the picture. The figure seems to listen to itself rather than to react to being spoken to by a person. This is achieved through the downcast eyes and the resulting avoidance of eye contact with the viewer. The picture is signed Claude Monet 1866 lower right .

background

Breakfast in the Green , Fragment, 1865/1866, Musée d'Orsay , Paris

Little is known about the genesis of Camille in the green dress . Claude Monet originally wanted to paint the multi-figure picture with the title: Breakfast in the Green for the exhibition in the Salon. However, he gave up on this project. Various reasons are assumed for this. On the one hand, Monet may have recognized that he would not finish the large, elaborate picture in time. However, he could also have been dissatisfied with the picture himself or - as he himself later reported - listened to Gustave Courbet's advice to forego the submission in order not to give rise to criticism. Instead, he made the portrait of his future wife. The painting duration of only four days, handed down by Théophile Thoré , was doubted for a long time. However, a restoration brought to light evidence of the speedy painting style. In addition, this time specification by the art critic should also underscore the great virtuosity of Monet. The picture was taken at a time when Claude Monet and his friend Frédéric Bazille were increasingly working on large-format portraits. For example, in January 1866, Bazille was working on a picture 200 centimeters high and 150 centimeters wide showing a woman and a man. The woman wore a green silk dress that he had previously borrowed and perhaps passed on to Monet for his portrait of Camille.

Monet submitted Camille in a green dress together with the somewhat older landscape painting The Street of Chailly to the Salon de Paris before the last deadline, March 20, 1866 . He did not identify himself as a student of Charles Gleyres , who was vice-president of the jury consisting of 24 members that year, as did Alfred Sisley or Bazille. Both pictures were admitted to the salon exhibition, where Camille in a green dress mostly generated positive reactions from the public and critics. The dealers Cadart & Luquet ordered a smaller replica of the painting, and Monet's sales also picked up. Two years later, in 1868, Claude Monet exhibited the painting Camille in a green dress in Le Havre in the “Exposition maritime internationale”. There he won a silver medal. The painting was then sold.

Role models and imitators

Portrait of Empress Elisabeth , Franz Xaver Winterhalter , 1865

The Camilles pose is based on various contemporary fashion illustrations . Their purpose was the presentation of the clothes, but the postures of the models were justified by their classification into smaller actions. This kind of small gesture can be found, for example, in the hand position of Camille on the chin. Also very common in the pictures to illustrate fashion is the representation from the back at an angle. This is how the silhouette of the dresses and their special jewelry was best presented. The dress and the posture are taken from two illustrations by the Petit Courrier des Dames from 1865 , albeit reversed . By picking up the latest fashions and presenting them in the popular mass media, Monet turned out to be a “painter of modern life”, as Charles Baudelaire had demanded of him in 1863. At the same time, he was compared to the important Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese in his depiction of the material . In addition to these modern influences, Monet took up a long tradition with the life-size portrait. For a long time, the life-size portrait was reserved for aristocrats. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that this genre opened up to people from the bourgeoisie . In the first half of the 19th century there were innovations in style and composition in portrait painting. Franz Xaver Winterhalter , for example, used attitudes of fashion illustration for the rulership portrait of Empress Elisabeth from 1865.

Classification in the complete works of Monet

The painting Camille in a green dress is an outstanding work of Monet's early creative period. It is also representative of a series of pictures that he made of his future wife. She was a model for him, for example, for breakfast in the green as well as for the women in the garden . Even as she was dying, she was still portrayed by her husband. After this portrait, Monet also painted several other women.

  • Women in the Garden , 1866

  • Camille in Japanese costume , 1875/1876

  • Camille Monet on her death bed , 1879

  • Madame Gaudibert , 1868

reception

Monet's Camille in the green dress was received positively by the critics and discussed in detail in several reviews. Émile Zola , who was particularly fond of young artists such as Bazille, Paul Cézanne and Monet, was particularly enthusiastic . In the May 11, 1866 edition of L'Evénement , he wrote: “I have to admit that the picture I have lingered in front of the longest is Monsieur Monet's Camille… Yes! That is a temperament, a real man in the wake of all these eunuchs. ”The Théophile Thorés report was also particularly positive. In addition, more conservative editors such as Charles Blanc , who published the Gazette des Beaux-Arts , discussed Monet's picture benevolently. However, there were also reviews such as those by Félix Jahyer and Edmond About . The painting was taken up in three caricatures. It also formed the hook for the poem Camille .

Particular attention was paid to the comparison between Monet and Édouard Manet . For example, on May 13th, a cartoon appeared in La Lune magazine on the occasion of Camille in a green dress , which took up this issue. It was signed “Monet ou Manet? - Monet. Corn, c'est à Manet que nous devons ce Monet; Bravo! Monet; merci Manet! "(German:" Monet or Manet? - Monet. But it is Manet to whom we owe this Monet. Bravo, Monet, thank you very much, Manet. "). The subject was also taken up in a letter from October 1866, which the writer Édmond Duranty sent to the painter Alphonse Legros in England. Duranty wrote: “[Manet] est d'ailleurs très tourmenté par son concurrent Monet. De sorte qu'on dit qu'après l'avoir manétisé il voudrait bien le demonétiser. ”(German:“ [Manet] is very concerned about his competitor Monet, because it is said that after he manétized him, he would now like to demonétise him. ”) These statements take up a supposed competition between the two artists. In fact, Monet and Manet became friends after Zacharie Astruc brokered their first meeting.

Provenance

In October 1868 , Arsène Houssaye bought the picture Camille in a green dress from the Exposition maritime internationale in Le Havre for 800 francs . It ended up in his Paris collection. He intended to bequeath the picture to the Musée du Luxembourg , but that did not happen. That is why the picture was up for auction from the Drouot auction house from May 22 to 23, 1896 as lot number 158 of the heiress Arséne Houssaye , but was withdrawn. As a result, Camille in the green dress belonged to the Henry Houssaye collection and stayed in Paris. In 1898 the picture went to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel for 400 francs and was acquired by Paul Cassirer's Paris agent , Georg Schwarz , around 1901/1902 . On March 31, Cassirer sold the painting to the Kunsthalle Bremen for 50,000 marks. The acquisition under the director Gustav Pauli was supported by the art association in Bremen , which carries the art gallery.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism. Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 99.
  2. ↑ a b c d Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism. Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 94.
  3. ^ A b Daniel Wildenstein: Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Taschen, Cologne 2003. page 61.
  4. ↑ The significantly smaller version of the painting at 81 cm × 55 cm is now in the Muzeul Naulional de Artă al României in Bucharest. See Marianne Delafond: À l''apogée de l''impressionnisme, la collection Georges de Bellio. La Bibliothèque des Arts Lausanne and Musée Marmottan Monet Paris, 2007, ISBN 978-2-88453-139-9 , p. 62.
  5. ↑ a b Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism . Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 96.
  6. ↑ Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism . Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 43.
  7. ↑ Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism . Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 45.
  8. ↑ Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism . Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 46.
  9. ^ A b Daniel Wildenstein: Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Taschen, Cologne 2003. page 62.
  10. ↑ a b Susanna Partsch: Great moments of art: From Nefertiti to Andy Warhol . CH Beck, 2003. ISBN 3-406-49490-0 . Page 171.
  11. ↑ Dorothee Hansen (ed.), Wulf Herzogenrath (ed.): Monet and Camille - portraits of women in impressionism . Hirmer Verlag GmbH, Munich 2005. Page 189.