The Red Kerchief (1868-73)

by Claude Monet (1840-1926)

“The Red Kerchief” depicts Monet’s first wife Camille, passing by the window at their home in Argenteuil, France.

It’s a mysterious, even melancholic painting. Her face is painted in an impressionistic style, and the trees and the snow are rendered in thick brush-strokes. The bright red of her kerchief draws our attention to her face, and she appears frozen in time.

The ghostly effect is enhanced by the knowledge that the painting seems to foreshadow Camille’s early and tragic death a few years later. Even the curtains seem to indicate the final and haunting image Monet would paint of her, titled ‘Camille on her death bed’ (1879).

Camille on her death bed (1879)

Camille was in many ways the love of Monet’s life. Without her he would never have become an artist, nor eventually succeeded as one. And the melancholy of the above image is only increased by the fact that during their marriage they lived in considerable financial hardship. She never got to wander through the gardens that Monet would later become so famous for depicting.

Instead, she walks through the cold, looking in from outside, like a ghostly presence.

We know that this painting had tremendous personal value to Monet. He kept it on the wall of his ateliers for the rest of his life, refusing to sell it. He never even signed it. I like to think that this painting was a comforting presence for Monet, reminding him of Camille and why he became an artist in the first place.

It’s an indelibly tender, and yet tragic painting. To me it cuts to the very core of who Monet was, both as a husband and an artist. And it’s perhaps one of the finest examples of Monet’s early works.

Julian

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