This painting depicts monet's first wife, camille, outside on a snowy day passing by the french doors of their home at argenteuil. Her face is rendered in a radically bold impressionist technique of mere daubs of paint quickly applied, just as the snow and trees are defined by broad, broken strokes of pure white and green. In its early stages, this composition contained two figures seated inside the room on either side of the window. Monet radically altered the composition by painting over the figures. They were replaced by an image of the artist's favorite model---his wife camille, who passes outside the window in a red cape. Intense light---reflected from the snow-covered landscape---floods the room, obliterating details along the walls and floor. The off-center window frame and the blurriness achieved through sketchy brushstrokes suggest the scanning movement of the artist's eye as he viewed this scene. Contrasted with cold blues and silver whites, camille's red cape draws the viewer's attention through the glass and into a swift exchange of glances, registering a brief moment in time. This painting evidently held special meaning for monet, for he kept it with him until his death in 1926. Object Type: painting. Genre: portrait. Date: between circa 1868 and circa 1873. Place of creation: France. Dimensions: Framed: 128.3 x 105.7 x 14.6 cm (50 1/2 x 41 5/8 x 5 3/4 in.); Unframed: 99 x 79.8 cm (39 x 31 7/16 in.). Medium: oil on fabric. Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art. The Red Kerchief, by Claude Monet, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.39
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