Women in the Garden

Women in the Garden (Femmes au jardin) is a large oil on canvas begun by Claude Monet in 1866, when he was 26, and finished early in 1867; it is in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

In the spring of 1866 Monet rented a small house near the station at Ville-d'Avray. His Camille, or The Woman in the Green Dress had just been well received at that year's Salon, and the success encouraged him to attempt another canvas on the scale of his abandoned Luncheon on the Grass. He painted it out of doors in the garden of the rented property, and to keep a single viewpoint across the whole surface he dug a trench into which the canvas could be lowered while he worked on its upper half. His companion and future wife Camille Doncieux posed for the figures, and he used fashion-magazine illustrations for the clothes. Fearing that creditors would seize it, he took the canvas with him to Normandy for the summer and completed it indoors after returning to Paris in February 1867.

Monet's subject was the play of sunlight and shade on white dresses and foliage. The faces are discreet or hidden, while the costumes, some in shadow and some in full sun, set static and moving figures against each other. Later commentators have found the figures awkwardly placed in the scene, but its treatment of light and shadow has been praised.

The Salon of 1867 rejected the picture, objecting to its subject and its heavy brushwork. Frédéric Bazille then bought it for 2,500 francs, payable in monthly instalments of 50 francs, to help his penniless friend. After Bazille's death in the war of 1870 it passed to his father, who exchanged it with Manet in 1876; Manet in turn traded it back to Monet. The French state bought it from Monet in 1921 for the Musée du Luxembourg, and it moved to the Louvre and in 1986 to the Musée d'Orsay. It measures 255 by 205 cm.