Camille

Camille, also known as The Woman in the Green Dress, is a life-size oil-on-canvas portrait by Claude Monet, painted in 1866, of Camille Doncieux, who later became his wife; it has been in the Kunsthalle Bremen since 1906.

Early in 1866 Monet realised that his huge multi-figure Luncheon on the Grass would not be ready in time for the Paris Salon, and in its place he painted this full-length portrait of Camille in a short time. The critic Théophile Thoré reported that it took only four days; the claim was long doubted, but restoration later found evidence of rapid execution. Monet submitted it, together with an older landscape, before the deadline of 20 March 1866. Both were accepted, and Camille was well received by the public and most critics, a Salon success Monet never repeated.

The canvas, 231 by 151 cm, shows Camille from behind and turning her head, eyes lowered, in an emerald-and-black striped silk dress and a fur-trimmed black jacket, with a feathered bonnet and yellowish gloves, against a dark red curtain. Her pose and costume derive from fashion illustrations and carte-de-visite photographs; the Kunsthalle notes that a full-length portrait, a format long reserved for royalty and the nobility, broke a convention when used for the painter's companion. The train is cut off at the left edge, suggesting movement beyond the frame.

Émile Zola, who did not yet know Monet, praised the picture warmly in L'Événement on 11 May 1866. Some visitors took it for a work by Édouard Manet, and a caricature in La Lune played on the confusion. The dealers Cadart & Luquet ordered a smaller replica. In 1868 the painting won a silver medal at the international maritime exhibition in Le Havre, where Arsène Houssaye bought it for 800 francs. It later passed to Paul Durand-Ruel and Paul Cassirer, who sold it to the Kunsthalle Bremen on 31 March 1906 for 50,000 marks.