Women in the Garden

Exhibited at the 1867 Salon, Women in the Garden was Monet's most ambitious attempt before 1870 to capture figures in the open air under full sunlight at a monumental scale — the canvas stands over two and a half metres tall. He reportedly dug a trench in his garden at Ville-d'Avray so he could work on the upper areas of the canvas without losing outdoor lighting conditions. The Salon jury rejected the work, but Frédéric Bazille purchased it from Monet to help him financially, and its reputation grew steadily. Now in the Musée d'Orsay, the painting is a landmark in the development of large-scale plein-air figure composition.

The chromatic daring of the work — particularly the bluish lavender shadows cast by sunlight filtered through foliage onto the white dresses — was radical for its date and challenged the academic convention of warm brown shadow. The paint surface is direct and varied in handling, with some passages freely worked and others more carefully resolved.