Camille Monet with child

About the painting

Monet's Argenteuil figure studies are smaller in size and more intimate in mood than his previous work. From 1872 until the time that Camille's illness became serious the home and garden were recurrent themes in his art.Madame Monet and Child is one of Monet's most tender portraits. Sequestered by the wall of roses, the two figures seem oblivious of everything but their work and play. Because of the regularity of pattern and contrast of warm and cool colors, the wall of flowers moves to the forefront of the painting, appearing to almost surround the figure of Camille as she sews. By this time in his career, Monet's technique of broken color can be seen fully developed. Monet has worked large parts of this canvas in trembling flecks of paint. His brush movements, seen in Camille's upswept hair and delicate features express an intimate tenderness. Although the hands are barely suggested, they focus expressively on the point where her needle pierces the white fabric.
Oscar Claude Monet

Claude Monet (French ) also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet borned on November 14, 1840 and died on December 5, 1926.He was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.
HIS LIFE
He was the second son of Claude-Adolphe and Louise-Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Claude Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer. On the first of April 1851, Monet entered the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. He first became known locally for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting.
On 28 January 1857 his mother died. He was 16 years old when he left school, and went to live with his widowed childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre.
When Monet traveled to Paris to visit The Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Monet, having brought his paints and other tools with him, would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw. Monet was in Paris for several years and met several painters who would become friends and fellow impressionists. One of those friends was Édouard Manet.
In June 1861 Monet joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for two years of a seven-year commitment, but upon his contracting typhoid his aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at a university. It is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter. Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at universities, in 1862 Monet became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as Impressionism.