The Red Kerchief

Claude Monet’s likeness of his first wife, Camille Doncieux, ranks among the most personal works of his early career. Painted around 1868–73, during the years the family spent in Normandy before Impressionism had taken its name, the portrait is unusual within Monet’s oeuvre, where Camille appears chiefly in figure scenes rather than formal likenesses. It came to Cleveland through the bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. in 1958.