Claude Monet – Meditation, Madame Monet on the Sofa

Meditation, Madame Monet on the Sofa is a hand-painted reproduction of a domestic scene by Monet: in a dark room a woman sits in an almost black dress, a small red book in her lap, a flowered sofa beside her. The original measures 74.5 x 48.2 cm, is oil on canvas and is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris under accession number RF 3665. The museum dates it cautiously, “vers 1871”, that is around 1871. We paint it in eight sizes or to your own, with a photograph of the finished work for approval before despatch.

Meditation, Madame Monet on the Sofa – Claude Monet

What is on the canvas?

The woman sits at the left end of a long sofa, her body turned slightly, her eyes lowered. The dress is dark, almost blue-black, a red bow is tied under her chin, and her hair is pinned high in a knot. A small red book lies in her lap, the fingers of one hand resting on the cover, and a white cuff shows at the edge of the dark sleeve. The sofa is covered in a pale fabric scattered with roses. At the left stands a marble chimneypiece with a blue-and-white vase and a round fan. At the right is a window with a white curtain.

Who is the woman on the sofa?

In its own title the museum calls her simply Madame Monet, and says nothing further about her. Who she was is recorded by another institution: the Metropolitan Museum in New York titles its own canvas by Monet “Camille Monet (1847–1879) on a Garden Bench”, naming the painter’s first wife and giving both her dates. The record of the Musée d’Orsay is silent about the sitter, and where it is silent we add nothing.

How is the work dated, and what does the canvas itself say?

The museum dates it “vers 1871”, which is a cautious “around”. For this work Wikidata is vaguer still than the museum — its value is precise only to the decade — which is the reverse of the usual case and worth putting on the record. There is no inscription: the record lists no signature, and none is to be found in either lower corner of the museum’s photograph.

What does the museum record say about the size?

The work is held by the Musée d’Orsay under accession number RF 3665. It gives the measurements in the order height by width, 48.2 x 74.5 cm; our table puts the width first, so here you read 74.5 x 48.2 cm. With its frame the whole measures 85.5 x 59.7 cm. This time the size also agrees with Wikidata to the decimal, which we note deliberately, because on neighbouring works it did not.

How did the work reach the museum?

In a single line, and the line is the museum’s: “Legs M. et Mme Raymond Koechlin, 1931” — the bequest of Monsieur and Madame Raymond Koechlin, 1931. The record says no more than that: no earlier owner, no sale, no exhibition. The museum publishes no longer chain for this canvas, so we assemble none either. Here any addition would mean we had found it elsewhere and credited it to the museum.

Two Camilles in one museum — which is ours?

The Musée d’Orsay holds two works by Monet showing the same woman, and they are easy to tell apart. Ours is RF 3665: landscape format, 74.5 cm wide against 48.2 high, cautiously dated. The other is RF 1963 3, “Camille sur son lit de mort”, upright format at 68 x 90 cm, dated to the single year 1879. The first shows her with a book on the sofa; the second, eight years later, on her deathbed. We sell that one too, as Camille Monet on Her Deathbed. Outside Paris the likeliest mix-up is Camille Monet on a Garden Bench of 1873, 80.3 x 60.6 cm, but that is a garden scene.

Where is the light in this picture?

At the window, not on the face. In the museum’s photograph the brightest surface is the white curtain at the right, and immediately behind it the flowered cover of the sofa, which holds the whole right half light. The face is indeed the brightest part of the figure, but the figure is dark: out of an almost unbroken dark mass only the hand and the white cuff rise. This is therefore not a portrait lit from within, but a room into which the light falls from the side and stops at a dark figure. Monet’s garden at Argenteuil in 1872, with a young woman reading in the grass while sunlight falls through the leaves, is Springtime.

How is our hand-painted version made?

Every order is painted individually by a painter, in oils on cotton or linen canvas. A canvas painting is made here with no print, no transfer and no machine step in between. This motif is demanding because of the relation of dark to light: if the painter lays the dark dress in as one flat black shape, the figure loses its body and becomes a silhouette, so it is built from blue, green and brown layers that resolve into black only at a distance. Every hand-painted oil painting that leaves our workshop is a little its own. Before despatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.

The museum record lists no inscription, and no signature can be made out in the lower corners of the museum’s photograph. That observation comes from the photograph, not from the record.

Which size for which wall?

Eight sizes are available, from 70 x 45 to 200 x 130 cm. The original falls exactly between the first two: 70 x 45 cm is a good four centimetres narrower, and 80 x 50 cm a good five wider. By proportion 100 x 65 cm is the closest, 1.54 against the original’s 1.55. The scene is low and wide, so it sits well above a bed, a sofa or a low chest of drawers. As a painting for living room walls 120 x 80 cm reads more calmly. Related motifs are in the Claude Monet gallery: A Corner of the Apartment, The Luncheon and Woman with a Parasol.

How high to hang the painting: the centre about 145 cm above the floor, and above furniture the lower edge 20 to 30 cm above it. We write more about hanging on our blog.

Made to measure, stretcher and frame

If you want the proportion of the original exactly, made to measure is the only route: send us the width and the height in centimetres. The canvas can be stretched on a wooden stretcher and delivered ready to hang, or we can send it rolled in a tube. The frame is not included in the price. A narrower frame in warm, muted gold or dark wood suits this scene. The museum keeps its own original in a frame with which the whole measures 85.5 x 59.7 cm.

Delivery and guarantee

Making the work normally takes two to three weeks, a few days longer at the largest sizes, because the oil has to dry between layers. If the work arrives damaged, or differs noticeably from the approved photograph, we replace it or refund the price. A hand-painted copy is not a factory product and small differences in the stroke are to be expected; damage or the wrong motif are not. We deliver within the European Union.

If the painting is a gift and you are unsure of the size, there is a gift voucher: the recipient chooses the size and the subject.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the original?

In Paris, at the Musée d’Orsay, under accession number RF 3665, where it arrived as a bequest in 1931.

Who is the woman shown?

The museum calls her Madame Monet. For a related canvas the Metropolitan Museum records her name and her dates: Camille Monet (1847–1879), the painter’s first wife.

What year is the work from?

The museum gives “around 1871” and not a single year.

What does the work say in one sentence?

That a quiet woman with a book in a dark room is as worthwhile a motif as a landscape, and that Monet painted his wife as a scene rather than as a pose.

• Motif. A woman in a dark dress with a red book in her lap, on a flowered sofa; a marble chimneypiece with vase and fan at the left, a window with a white curtain at the right.
• Original. Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 48.2 cm, dated by the museum to “around 1871”; Musée d’Orsay, acc. no. RF 3665, Koechlin bequest 1931.
• Ours. Eight sizes from 70 x 45 to 200 x 130 cm; the original falls between the first two, and by proportion 100 x 65 cm is closest to it.
• Worth knowing. The same museum also holds Camille on her deathbed, RF 1963 3, dated to the single year 1879 — where ours is dated only cautiously.