Women in the Garden

Women in the Garden from 1866–67 at the Musée d'Orsay is the most ambitious figure painting of Monet's pre-Impressionist career — a canvas over two and a half meters tall that he reportedly dug a trench in the garden to paint from below so that outdoor light conditions could be maintained on the uppermost sections. The Salon jury rejected it in 1867, a blow that pushed him toward the independent exhibition strategy that would eventually produce the first Impressionist show. Frédéric Bazille purchased the canvas from Monet at the agreed price of two thousand five hundred francs, paid in monthly installments, helping his friend survive the financial strain of the rejection. The work's Salon ambitions were explicit: it competed directly with the large-scale academic garden subjects of the day but insisted on outdoor light truth over studio-composed finish. The bluish lavender shadows on the white dresses — painted from the observation that strong sunlight creates blue-violet shadow rather than warm brown — were among the most radical chromatic decisions in French painting since Delacroix, and they set the chromatic agenda for the entire Impressionist generation.

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.