A family relaxes in a garden, a man tends flowers in the background, and a woman and child rest in the shade nearby. Three great painters may have all been in that garden at the very same time.
What you're looking at
Édouard Manet painted this portrait during a summer visit to Argenteuil in 1874, showing his friend Claude Monet's family: Monet himself tending his own flowers in the background, and his wife Camille and their son Jean resting in the shade in the foreground. Manet signed the canvas directly within the scene, a small but genuine record of a real afternoon among friends.
Three painters, one garden, one afternoon
What makes this painting especially notable is that Manet wasn't working alone that day. Pierre-Auguste Renoir arrived partway through the same session and set up his own easel, painting his own version of the exact same scene from a slightly different angle. That means two major Impressionist-era painters were quite literally standing side by side, painting the same family in the same garden at the same time, a rare documented instance of two artists' working methods captured almost simultaneously, from two different vantage points on one afternoon.
The casual, informal setting reflects the close social circle among these Impressionist painters during the 1870s, when they frequently visited one another, painted alongside each other, and used one another's families and gardens as ready subjects for exactly this kind of relaxed outdoor scene.
One detail to look for
Look at Monet himself in the background, tending his flowers. He's almost a secondary figure in his own family's portrait, more focused on his garden than on posing for his friend's canvas.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original — 61 x 99.7 cm — so what you're hanging is honestly scaled to the painting Manet made. Shop the canvas print.