Provenance

Mme Ernest Donop de Monchy

Romanian, 1863 - 1958

Explore Selected Works

Shown from the hips up, a pale-skinned young woman wearing a white dress sits smiling gently at us in this vertical portrait painting. Blended strokes of pearl white, cool green, and muted blue create an overall soft, almost blurred look. The woman’s body is angled to our left, but she turns her face to look at us with brown eyes under dark, curved brows. She has a heart-shaped face with rosy cheeks, a thin, short nose, and full, pink lips, which are closed in a smile. Her honey-blond hair is swept up and back, but a few tendrils curl on her forehead and the nape of her neck. The neckline of her sleeveless white dress is cut low. The bodice fits tightly to a narrow waist, and a sprig of flowers is suggested by a few strokes of fern green and bright white at the center of the chest. A pale blue collar or ruffled band encircles her neck like a choker. Her hands rest together in her lap, and a white cloth loops over her forearms. The background is painted with loose strokes of powder blue and sage green against the off-white of the canvas, which is visible in some areas, especially along the left edge. The artist signed the painting near the woman’s elbow to our left, “Renoir.”
Auguste Renoir, Madame Henriot, c. 1876, oil on canvas, Gift of the Adele R. Levy Fund, Inc., 1961.3.1

Madame Henriot

Auguste Renoir · c. 1876 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.3.1

A cloud of canary-yellow flowers with pumpkin-orange centers on tall stems with emerald and pine-green leaves fills the top half of this vertical still life painting. The flowers, vase, the round tabletop on which they sit, and the background are loosely painted with visible brushstrokes of vibrant color. The flowers have long, pointed petals like daisies. The bouquet is rimmed with a ring of verdant leaves near where the stems gather in the narrow neck of the cylindrical, ivory-white vase. The vase might sit on a circular cloth edged with alternating sage-green and plum-purple forms like pompoms, but the loose painting style makes these details difficult to make out. The round tabletop is cropped by left and bottom edges of the canvas. The background behind the bouquet and table is painted with long, vertical brushstrokes in salmon pink, pale turquoise, denim blue, and creamy white. The artist signed and dated the painting in red in the lower right corner: “Claude Monet 1880.”
Claude Monet, Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers, 1880, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.181

Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers

Claude Monet · 1880 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.181

We look down onto a landscape where several laundry lines have been draped mostly with white sheets or cloth to dry in a flat, grassy yard in front of a rustic house and a distant town in this horizontal painting. The scene is created entirely with thick, visible brushstrokes that creates a sense of texture on the canvas’s surface and makes many details difficult to make out. The forms of at least three women wearing skirts hang laundry out along the lines, and a person wearing trousers tends to a flat piece of green ground near the lower left corner. A few pieces of white cloth have been draped over the wooden fence that runs along the bottom edge of the canvas. A dove-gray cart with wooden carriage wheels rests, tipped forward, at the center of the laundry lines. To our right and just beyond the laundry lines, a two-story ivory and slate-blue house with a gray peaked roof sits behind a grove of emerald-green trees. The laundry field and the grassy plane beyond is painted with a pale celery green with long, horizontal strokes. Dabs of moss green and a white streak interrupt the field in the distance. Beyond that, touches of steel and silvery-gray paint suggest smokestacks and smoke in a town along the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up this composition. A few patches of vivid blue sky peek through a screen of shell-pink and cream-white clouds above. The artist signed the work in brick-red paint in the lower left corner, “Berthe Morisot.”
Berthe Morisot, Hanging the Laundry out to Dry, 1875, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.28

Hanging the Laundry out to Dry

Berthe Morisot · 1875 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.28

From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas. Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us. Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left. She holds the parasol with both hands, and her brown hair is covered with a hat. Long strokes of white paint across her face suggest a veil fluttering in the breeze. The tall grass she stands in is dotted with buttercup yellow and plum purple, and she casts a long diagonal shadow along the grass toward us. The young boy seems to stand on the other side of the hill, since the grass and flowers comes up to his waist. He wears a white jacket and pale yellow straw hat. His arms are by his sides, and he seems to look off into the distance to our left. A sunny blue sky behind the people is dotted with bright blue clouds. The painting is created with loose brushstrokes throughout, and they are especially choppy in the clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in royal-blue letters at the lower right: “Claude Monet 75.”
Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.29

Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son

Claude Monet · 1875 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.29

Four flowers and greenery create a loose bouquet in a clear glass in this vertical still life, which is painted with visible brushstrokes throughout. The glass has a tall, narrow, rounded bowl on a flaring foot like a drinking glass. One fully open, light pink peony bloom bows over the edge of the glass to our left. A pink bud stands upright in the glass. Two other oblong flowers, perhaps closed tulips, angle to the left. One is smoky purple, and the other is cream-white edged with brick red. One pink petal lies on the tabletop, which is painted with broad strokes of ash and earth brown. Canvas is visible along the bottom edge and in the lower corners. The background behind the flowers is painted with dashes and long strokes.
Berthe Morisot, Peonies, c. 1869, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.10

Peonies

Berthe Morisot · c. 1869 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1994.59.10

We look slightly down onto a baby tucked into an oval-shaped cradle with a woman sitting on the far side looking down at the child in this vertical painting. Both the woman and baby have light skin. The cradle is draped with a sky-blue, scallop-edged cloth decorated with pink flowers and green leaves. A curtain of the same material is tied above so it hangs down behind the head of the cradle from the top center of the composition. The baby’s dark eyes are wide open, and he seems to gaze ahead. His cheeks are flushed peach, and his coral-pink lips are pressed down in a crescent shape. The baby’s head is wrapped in a white hood with a royal-blue bow or decoration over the right ear, to our left. Two loosely painted, round, salmon-pink shapes on either side of the child suggest hands emerging from the under the white blanket. In his left fist, to our right, the baby holds a white drum on a pumpkin-orange stick, with red and white forms, possibly feathers, at the top. The dark green handle of a pinwheel lies across the baby’s legs in the cradle. Another green, vertical form overlapping the edge of the crib suggests that another toy is clipped or propped there. It is difficult to tell if the pinwheel in the crib has canary-yellow and mauve-pink blades or if there are two, overlapping toys. The woman sits with her back to us but is angled so we see her profile looking down at the baby. Her face is painted with broad strokes of sand brown and parchment white. Her dark hair is pulled back under a white cap, and she wears a charcoal-gray and black, vertically striped dress with a white collar. Her back rests against the slats of a wooden chair, which seems to dissolve into the loosely painted, fawn-brown area in the lower right corner. The cradle sits next to a bed, mostly cut off by the left edge of the painting, with a golden-brown blanket or cover. Eggshell-white cloth seems to hang around the bed and along the wall behind the woman. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes.
Claude Monet, The Cradle - Camille with the Artist's Son Jean, 1867, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.25

The Cradle - Camille with the Artist's Son Jean

Claude Monet · 1867 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.25

We look slightly down onto a bare, gnarled tree near a gray, dirt path, which leads back to a hamlet in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so many details are indistinct. To our left, the gray tree trunk sways to the left as the branches of its skeletal canopy nearly span the width of the painting. The path extends from the lower right corner of the painting into the distance, around a lattice-like fence, which also runs across the width of the canvas. To our right and facing away from us, a person wearing brown pants, a sky-blue shirt, and a gray cap leans his forearms on the chest-high fence as he presumably talks with the woman standing on the other side. She wears a long navy-blue dress with a sea-blue apron and a tan hat. The land enclosed within the fence is painted with bands of peanut brown and sage green. Another woman wearing a slate-blue skirt, a sky-blue shirt, and a white cap walks away from us down the path using a cane or walking stick. To her right is a thicket of loosely painted moss-green and rust-brown foliage. Across a gully in the distance, a white picket fence separates us from the small village. The buildings have white or beige walls and pitched terracotta-red, tan, or denim-blue roofs. Beyond these structures, flax-brown trees are silhouetted against a light blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark brown in the lower left corner: “C. Pissarro. 1872.”
Camille Pissarro, The Fence, 1872, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.31

The Fence

Camille Pissarro · 1872 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.31

Bibliography

1964

  • Niculescu, Remus. "Georges de Bellio, l'ami des impressionnistes." Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art 1, no. 2 (1964):209+

1978

  • Monneret, Sophie, L'Impressionnisme et son Époque 4 vols. Paris, 1978-1981:I:66-68