In the Meadow (Dans la prairie)

Dans la prairie (In the Meadow) is a summer painting by Claude Monet of his wife Camille lying in deep grass, reading, under a green parasol at Argenteuil. Signed and dated 1876 and catalogued by Wildenstein as no. 405, it was shown in Paris at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877. It has stayed in private hands for most of its life and was sold at Christie's in London on 4 February 2009 for £11,241,250.

What you're looking at

Almost the whole canvas is meadow. Tall grasses in many greens, from blue-green to acid yellow-green, rise from the bottom edge to within a hand's breadth of the top, where a thin band of pale sky and distant blue shows. Scattered through them are flowers painted as single dabs and stars: yellow buttercups or ragwort, white daisies, lilac and mauve blooms, a few touches of pink.

Camille lies or half-sits in the middle of it, turned to the left, a book or paper open in her hands. She wears a white or pale lilac summer dress with a frilled collar, and a large white hat trimmed with pink and red flowers that is the brightest spot in the picture. Her face, in warm pink, is turned down to her reading. Behind her, at upper right, an open parasol tilts toward us, its underside deep green and its top struck white by the sun, half lost among the grasses. The flowers and stalks cross over her dress, so that she seems to sink into the meadow. The signature and date are at lower right.

Where and when it was painted

In 1876 the Monets were living in their second rented house at Argenteuil, with fields and meadows within a short walk. Monet painted Camille out of doors many times there, sometimes in motion, as in Walk near Argenteuil and Woman with a Parasol, and sometimes still, as here. The Christie's catalogue described her as almost submerged by the vivid abundance of foliage, and that is the picture's subject: a figure absorbed into a landscape. See Monet at Argenteuil.

How it was painted

The grass is painted in long, flicking, often diagonal strokes laid wet over wet, crossing one another in every direction, with the flowers added as separate touches on top. Monet works around Camille's figure rather than first defining it, so that the blades of grass overlap her dress and the edges of her body disappear. The palette is high-keyed and almost entirely green and white, with the hat and the few flowers providing all the warmth.

How it compares

A reading woman in a garden was a favorite theme for Monet in the early 1870s; compare Camille Monet on a Garden Bench (1873) or his earlier, more formal figure pictures such as Women in the Garden. Dans la prairie is looser and more immersive than either: Camille is no longer posed in front of the landscape but inside it. The idea of a figure lost in tall vegetation returns in Monet's Giverny pictures of the late 1880s.

Ownership and where to see it

The painting was shown at the third Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1877 and spent most of the next century in private European collections; it was last exhibited publicly, according to the 2009 sale coverage, at the Tate Gallery in London in 1957. At Christie's London Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale on 4 February 2009, during the financial crisis, it sold for £11,241,250, below its reported estimate of around £15 million. The buyer was not named. For Monet canvases on public view, see where to see Monet's paintings.