◧ Country: France
◧ Title: [Woman in the Garden]
◧ Medium: Oil painting on canvas
◧ Painting Size: 82 x 100 cm (32.2" x 39.3")
◧ Museum: Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
◧ Country of Stamp Issue: Russia
◧ Date of Issue: Dec. 12, 1973
◧ Face Value: 14 Kopecks
◧ Issued as Hermitage Museum Arts series
Monet spent his childhood in Le Havre, which he periodically visited. The Le Coteaux estate at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre belonged to Monet's cousin, Paul-Eugene Lecadre. Settling here in the summer of 1867, the artist painted several landscapes in the garden of the estate, of which "Woman in the Garden" is of central importance. Dressed in the fashion of the day, the figure of a lady was posed by Lecadre's wife - Jeanne-Marguerite Lecadre. This lonely silhouette introduces an elegaic, sorrowful note into the painting whilst the bright, light area of the dress plays in important role in the balancing the composition and in demonstrating the interrelationship of light and colour. (excerpt from Hermitage Museum)
[Women in the Garden] was originally in Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin's collection before 1917 Russian Revolution. Shchukin was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.
Shchukin made his first art purchases following a trip to Paris in 1898, when he bought his first Monet, [The Pyramides at Port-Coton, Rough Sea], which is now in Pushkin Museum.
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| [The Pyramides at Port-Coton, Rough Sea] Pushkin Museum |
Shchukin's [The Pyramides at Port-Coton, Rough Sea] at Pushkin Museum is one of a series of six paintings produced by Claude Monet in 1886. They all show the rocky Atlantic coast of Belle-Île-en-Mer, where Monet visited and painted them between September 12 and October 25, 1886.
By 1914, Shchukin owned thirteen (13) Monet paintings, including [Women in the Garden].
