Breakfast in the countryside (Monet)
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| Breakfast in the countryside (middle fragment) |
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| Claude Monet , 1865–1866 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 248.7 x 218 cm |
| Musée d'Orsay |
Breakfast in the Green ( French Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ) is a painting by the French painter Claude Monet , which he tackled in 1865 in response to a painting of the same name by his painter colleague Édouard Manet . The picture with the dimensions 4.6 by 6 meters remained unfinished. Two cut-up parts of the painting have been preserved and are in the Musée d'Orsay .
description
In its original form, the picture showed twelve people, dressed in the then current Parisian fashion, having a picnic in a sunny clearing in a birch forest. The figures shown are grouped around the white picnic blanket on which the food is presented. The mood in this natural area is mainly created by the play of light and shadow.
history
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In the Paris Salon of 1865, Monet was allowed to show two marine paintings, which met with a positive response, which prompted Claude Monet to plan a monumental breakfast in the countryside for the Salon exhibition in 1866 , which he was unable to complete. His model was Camille Doncieux , with whom Monet entered into a relationship.
For the figures in the picture, Monet's lover Camille and his friend Frédéric Bazille sat and stood as models in the forest of Fontainebleau , which he recorded in a preliminary study. He transferred this to large format in his studio in Paris from around October 1865, but had to realize shortly before the start of the salon that he would not be able to finish the picture in time. Monet himself assigned this picture a key position in his work and assigned it a special place in his studio, where it could be admired extensively by his visitors.
Since the monumental format made it impossible to work outdoors, the picture was taken in the studio. The painting remained unfinished, not least because of criticism from Gustave Courbet . Monet also refrained from submitting it to the salon. He later had to leave breakfast in the country to his landlord as a deposit for his rent debts . However, since he stored the picture rolled up in his damp cellar for six years, it moldy on the edges. When Monet released the picture again in 1884, it was badly damaged and the edges had to be trimmed. Only two lots could be restored.
There are a total of three preliminary studies. These are in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow .
Idol
Monet planned the picture based on Manet's painting The Breakfast in the Green from 1863, which caused a scandal with the nudity depicted without a mythological connection. Monet admired the works of Manet, with whom he had been in close contact since 1866. However, Monet wanted his painting to be more in line with popular taste.
In contrast to Manet's picture, Monet's breakfast in the countryside was not to be created in the studio alone, but in the open air (en plein air). Another difference was the renouncement of a provocation in the representation of the picture in order to adapt to the tastes of the art-interested public, since Monet was looking for recognition in the salon that he had not yet found. The figures should be life-size and look even more lifelike than in the works of Manet and Gustave Courbet .
