Michel Monet with a Pompon

Portrait de Michel Monet en bonnet à pompon (Michel Monet with a Pompon) is a small, intimate portrait by Claude Monet of his second son, Michel, born in March 1878, painted at Vétheuil in 1880 when the boy was about two. Catalogued by Wildenstein as no. 633, it is unsigned, stayed in the family, and came to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris in 1966 with the bequest of the sitter himself.

What you're looking at

The child is shown head and shoulders, close up and frontal, filling most of the canvas. He wears a dark knitted bonnet, nearly black, topped with a large round pompon that rises like a dome above his head, and his brown hair falls in a fringe across his forehead. His round face is pale, modeled in pink, cream and gray, with dark, wide-set eyes looking straight at us and a small, slightly pursed red mouth. The expression is serious, a little wary, as small children often are when made to sit still.

Below, a coat or cape in vivid orange-red, with a frilled collar in paler orange and a dark band at the neck, is painted in loose, quick strokes and left unfinished at the edges. The background is a scrubbed gray-green and brown, brushed in rapid diagonal strokes so that the canvas shows through in places. The contrast of the dark bonnet, pale face and bright orange coat gives the little picture its punch.

Where and when it was painted

Michel Monet was born in Paris on 17 March 1878, a few months before the family moved to Vétheuil on the Seine. His mother, Camille, died there in September 1879, when he was eighteen months old. In 1880 the household at Vétheuil included Monet, his two sons and Alice Hoschedé with her six children; Alice raised Michel after Camille's death and later became Monet's second wife. This portrait belongs to that difficult period, painted in the months after Camille's death, when Monet was also painting the frozen Seine and the breakup of the ice. See Monet at Vétheuil.

How it was painted

The portrait is a rapid, informal study. The face is the most worked part, built up in small, soft touches; the bonnet is laid in with a few broad, dark strokes; the coat is a flurry of orange and red marks, more like the flowers in a garden picture than tailored cloth. Monet did not sign it, which suggests it was a family picture rather than one meant for sale.

Monet's portraits of his children

Monet painted his sons often when they were small, usually as figures in landscapes, like Jean in Woman with a Parasol or in the interior A Corner of the Apartment. Close-up portraits like this one are rarer. Its frankness can be compared with Camille Monet on Her Deathbed of 1879, the other intimate family image of these Vétheuil months. Michel later lived at Giverny, became a collector, and inherited his father's studio contents.

What became of Michel

Michel grew up at Giverny in the large blended family of Monets and Hoschedés. After his father's death in 1926 he inherited the house, the gardens and the paintings remaining in the studio, though he lived elsewhere and the property declined. He died in a car accident in 1966, and his bequest of his father's works, including this portrait of himself as a toddler, transformed the Musée Marmottan into a museum of Monet.

Where to see it

Michel Monet died in 1966 and left his father's paintings, including this portrait of himself, to the Académie des Beaux-Arts for the Musée Marmottan, today the Musée Marmottan Monet (inventory 5018). The museum holds the world's largest collection of Monet's work. See the Musée Marmottan Monet.