Woman with a Parasol, facing left

Woman with a Parasol, Facing Left from 1886 at the Musée d'Orsay belongs to a pair of large figure paintings Monet made in 1886 — the companion 'facing right' variant is also in the Orsay — that have been identified as recollections of the Camille-and-Jean parasol painting of 1875 but with a different model. By 1886 Camille had been dead for seven years, and the model for these later parasol figures is generally believed to be Suzanne Hoschedé, Alice's daughter who had become one of Monet's favored models in the garden at Giverny. The 1886 pair represent his return to large-scale outdoor figure painting after years devoted almost exclusively to pure landscape, and they show his mature Impressionist technique — fully dissolved form, atmospheric contre-jour lighting, vigorous directional brushwork — applied to the figure subject. The Orsay holds both variants, allowing visitors to compare the two complementary views and understand the project as an exploration of how the same atmospheric conditions read differently from opposing angles.

Monet's brushwork is characteristically loose and broken, built from comma-like strokes that dissolve solid forms into shimmering surfaces of pure color. He worked rapidly outdoors to capture transient atmospheric effects, layering complementary hues without blending to create optical vibration.