Claude Monet

Catalogue entry

Claude Monet 1840-1926

N04184 Femme assise sur un Banc (Woman seated on a Bench) c.1874

Inscribed 'Claude Monet' b.r.
Oil on canvas, 29 x 22 (73.5 x 56)
Presented by the National Art-Collections Fund 1926
Prov: [? purchased from the artist by Pascal, Paris, 1877 as 'Figure assise']; anonymous sale (B.), Drouot, Paris, 29 May 1897, lot 48 as 'Femme sur un banc', 71 x 53cm; sold for 620 frs.; [? with Ambroise Vollard, Paris]; Marczell de Nemes, Budapest, c.1910; Marczell de Nemes sale, Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 18 June 1913, lot 112 repr.; bt. Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 4,200 frs., apparently for a client; Bela Hein, Paris; with Durand-Ruel, New York and Paris, 1922; NACF 1926
Exh: Nemzetközi Impresszionista kiállitás, Müvészház, Budapest, April-May 1910 (23, repr.) as 'Pihenés' (Resting); Nemes Marcell Képgyüjtemény-einek Kiállitása, Szépmüvészeti Muzeumban, Budapest, 1910-11 (70) as 'Au Parc'; Sammlung des Kgl. Rates Marczell von Nemes-Budapest ausgestellte Gemälde, Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, July-December 1912 (105); Opening Exhibition of the Modern Foreign Gallery, Tate Gallery, June-October 1926 (works not numbered)
Lit: Maurice Malingue, Claude Monet (Monaco 1943), p.146, repr. p.62 as 'Dans le Parc. Portrait de Mme Monet'; Oscar Reuterswärd, Monet (Stockholm 1948), p.113 repr. as 'Model on a Park Bench' c.1877; Luigina Rossi Bortolatto, L'Opera Completa di Claude Monet 1870-1889 (Milan 1972), No.158, p.99, repr. (dated 1878); Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et Catalogue raisonné (Lausanne-Paris 1974), Vol.1, No.343, p.260, repr. p.261 as 'Femme assise sur un Banc' 1874
Repr: Les Arts, No.138, June 1913, p.31 as 'Dans le Parc'

This picture has also been known under such titles as 'In the Park', 'Woman in a Park' and 'Resting', and appears in the Durand-Ruel files as 'In the Park (Portrait of Madame Monet)'. However Mme Blanche Hoschedé-Monet told Oscar Reuterswärd in 1947 that it does not represent her mother, Camille, but a model, whose name she had forgotten, who also sat to Degas and other artists. Jean-Pierre Hoschedé subsequently confirmed (letter of 21 July 1954) that both he and Camille's son Michel Monet were quite sure it could not be her. The exceptionally free handling seems to reflect the influence of Manet and it may have been painted in the summer of 1874 at Argenteuil at a time when Monet and Manet were painting together, sometimes side by side.

There is an inscription on the stretcher which reads 'jeune femme sur un banc par Monet | Vollard' (girl on a bench by Monet | Vollard).

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.537, reproduced p.537

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