Lilla Cabot Perry: Reminiscences of Monet, Pt. 6

"Regatta at Sainte-Adresse" by Claude Monet

"Once and only once I saw Claude Monet paint indoors. I had come to his studio and, finding him at work, was for going away at once, but he insisted on my coming in and sitting on the studio sofa while he went on painting. He had posed his step-daughter, a beautiful young girl in her teens, in a lilac muslin dress, sitting at a small table on which she rested one of her elbows. In a vase in front of her was one life-size sunflower, and she was painted full length but not quite life-size as she was a little behind the sunflower. I was struck by the fact that this indoor picture was so much lower in key, so much darker than his outdoor figures or than most studio portraits and thought of this some years later when he paid the usual penalty of success by having many imitators. 

One day as he came back from a visit to the Champ de Mars Salon I asked him how he liked the outbreak of pallid interiors painted in melted butter and spinach tones for which he was indirectly responsible. As he sat there with his hands upon his knees I shall never forget the impetuous gesture with which he clasped his hand to his head and growled despairingly: 'Madame, des fois j'ai envie de peintre noir! [Madame, sometimes I want to be a painter of black!]'

My husband and I were much interested in the reminiscences of his early struggles. He told us that his people were 'dans le commerce' [in business] at Le Havre and when, a boy in his teens, he wished to become a painter, they opposed him vigorously in the approved traditional manner. He went through some very hard times. He painted portrait heads of sea captains in one sitting for five francs a head and also made and sold caricatures. 

[Eugene] Boudin saw one of these caricatures in a small shop, sought his acquaintance and invited him to out painting with him. At first Monet did not appreciate this unsought privilege and went reluctantly, but, after watching Boudin at work and seeing how closely his landscapes resembled nature, he was only too glad to learn all he could from the older man. There are still some early Monets extant which plainly show Boudin's influence. Even after he had painted many landscapes that were purely in his own style, the young Monet had the utmost difficulty in selling them at the modest price of fifty francs apiece."

To be continued

(From "Reminiscences of Monet from 1889-1909" by Lilla Cabot Perry from The American Magazine of Art, March 1927, Vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 119-125.)