On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt

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) suggest that in an early stage of the painting, Camille held a bonneted child, presumably the couple’s baby, Jean.