Monet. Nathalia Brodskaya

of Madame Gaudibert

      1868

      Oil on canvas, 216 × 138 cm

      Musée d’Orsay, Paris

      Troyon made recommendations which Monet relayed in his letters to Boudin – he should learn to draw figures, make copies in the Louvre, and should enter a reputable studio, for instance that of Thomas Couture. Monet thus immediately identified the figures who would provide his artistic guidelines.

      At the Water’s Edge, Bennecourt

      1868

      Oil on canvas, 81 × 100 cm

      The Art Institute of Chicago

      These were the landscapists of the Barbizon school, who had pointed French landscape painting towards its own native countryside; Millet and Courbet, who had turned to depicting the work and way of life of simple people; and, finally, Boudin and Jongkind, who had brought to landscape the freshness and immediacy lacking in works of the older generation of Barbizon painters.

      La Grenouillère

      1869

      Oil on canvas, 75 × 100 cm

      The Metropolitan Museum of Art

      New York

      Monet was to paint alongside several of these masters – Boudin, Jongkind, Courbet (and Whistler, too) – and by watching them at work he would receive much practical instruction. Although Monet did not regard with great favour his immediate teacher Charles Gleyre, whose studio he joined in 1862, his stay there was by no means wasted, for he acquired valuable professional skills during this time.