"Camille on Her Deathbed"

Find the painting on the detail page. Among the vivid flower paintings is a gloomy, bluish work: "Camille on Her Deathbed." At first it can feel unsettling. Monet painted his beloved wife as she was dying, right beside her. He first met Camille in order to paint her as a model, so you might wonder whether he loved her truly or merely as a muse, or whether he found light rather than sorrow in her ailing face.

But a letter Monet sent to an acquaintance after Camille's death shows he loved her as more than a subject. Part of it reads: "My poor wife died this morning at 10:30. Being left alone like this is truly heartbreaking. May I ask you one favor? I enclose the pawn ticket with this letter. Could you retrieve the pendant necklace I left with the pawnbroker? It is the only keepsake my wife has kept. I want to put that necklace around her neck before she goes." You can feel his sorrow at never having been able to give his beloved wife a life of comfort, along with his love.

The colors, too, are a dark, gloomy blue he rarely used. You can feel Monet's grief directly. Perhaps, in putting his beloved wife's death on canvas, he wanted to hold on to that image with his eyes and with paint.