Woman with a Parasol by Claude Monet Ornament

Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son by Claude Monet, oil on canvas 1875, is a painting of a woman in a white dress holding an umbrella over her head upon the top of a hill covered in grass and wildflowers, backlit against a brilliant blue sky and white clouds. At her side is a young boy, Camille, son of the artist. Painted in quickly applied strokes of lush oil paint, the picture looks upwards at the hilltop, while the subject casts a deep, cool shadow across the field grass and flowers. Yellow reflections from the flowers bounce off the woman’s luminous white dress. Monet evokes light, colour, form, shadow and atmosphere with rapid, decisive strokes of his brush in constructing an unforgettable image of a woman strolling amidst the natural world. Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) was a founder and chief driving force behind the French Impressionist school of painting. Born in Paris, Monet studied with Eugene Boudin, who taught the basics of oil painting and plein-air (open air) easel painting, and later with painter Charles Gleyre, eventually befriending fellow Impressionists Manet, Renoir, Bazille and others. Rejected by the Paris Salon and other venues of the 19th century academic establishment, the Impressionists painted directly from nature, capturing fleeting moments in time in bright, broken colour and small, rapid brushstrokes. Monet lived and studied in London and Holland, producing many paintings, until the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, where his painting Impression: Sunrise gained notoriety and earned the group its famous moniker. Following the death of his child and of his first wife Camille, Monet settled in Giverny, where increasing success allowed him to establish a home and studio surrounded by elaborate gardens. Monet painted many landscapes, including garden scenes and his famous Cathedral series, with increasing concerns for light, colour and atmosphere, with a concern for colour and shapes that in his older age bordered on a kind of abstraction, making him one of the most beloved painters of the modern era.