Despite his copious planning, Monet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe remained a difficult task, and the troubles experienced by Monet as he tackled his life-size canvas seemed to reflect his actual disinterest in figure paintings. Monet’s lack of interest in figures is not immediately evident from his study for Déjeuner sur l’herbe, called Camille et Bazille, or The Strollers (1865). Upon closer examination, however, we find Monet’s interest was held by the landscape more so than his figures, even though they were his mistress, Camille Doncieux, and his closest friend, Fredéric Bazille, whom he had met in 1863 in Gleyre’s studio in Paris (Brenneman, 11). Monet had pleaded with Bazille to come to Chailly to pose (Isaacson, 26), yet rather than paint a detailed portrait, Monet places his figures in the shadow: thus, they are portrayed in subdued hues of black, grey, and off-white. And although the figures occupy the majority of the space on the canvas, our attention is drawn to the more natural aspects: the leaves, the grass, the bush. The leaves of the tree and the grass, highlighted by sunlight, are depicted in vivid greens, with strong brushstrokes, giving energy to the landscape. The texture of the leaves of the small bush in the foreground causes them to jump out at us, bringing our attention to them rather than the “strollers”, Monet’s supposed subject.
Image: Monet, Claude. Camille et Bazille (study for Déjeuner sur l’herbe), 1865. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Scanned from: Wildenstein, Daniel. Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Vol. 2. Köln, Germany: Taschen, 1994. 4 vols.