On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt
1868
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
81.5 × 100.7 cm (32 1/16 × 39 5/8 in.); Framed: 98.5 × 117.8 × 8 cm (38 3/4 × 46 3/8 × 3 1/8 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
81539
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Here Claude Monet’s future wife, Camille Doncieux, sits on an island in the Seine River, looking toward the hamlet of Gloton, next to the town of Bennecourt, from which she and Monet have presumably rowed. This is the only painting to survive from the brief period that the couple spent in Gloton, which the novelist Émile Zola recommended to Monet as a cheap rural retreat that was easily accessible from Paris. Pentimenti (visible traces of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint) sugg...
About the Artist
Claude Monet · 1840–1926
Claude Monet, born Oscar-Claude Monet on November 14, 1840, in Paris and raised in Le Havre, Normandy, began his artistic journey as a successful teenage caricaturist. His formal training started at the Le Havre secondary school of the arts in 1851, where he received his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard. Around 1858, he met Eugène Boudin, who became his pivotal mentor, introducin...