In 1866, Claude Monet started working with a large painting in the garden of the property he was renting in the Paris suburbs. Using his future wife, nineteen-year-old Camille Doncieux, as his sole model, his ambitiously large Women in the Garden (1866-67) was a culmination of the ideas and themes in his earlier work.
Monet was hopeful that the work would be included in the Paris Salon, but the painting was refused by the jury of the 1867 Salon which, apart from the lack of subject and narrative, deplored the visible brushstrokes which it regarded as a sign of carelessness and incompleteness. One of the juries said that too many people think of nothing but continuing in abominable direction but later representatives of the French government had agreed to pay the incredible price of 200,000 francs for it.
In January 1867, his friend Bazille bought Monet work for the prize of 2,500 francs in order to help Monet out of the extreme debt that forced him to slash over 200 canvases to avoid them being taken by his creditors.
Women In The Garden 1866 By Claude Monet
