Some famous names for you here today. This is 'Madame Monet Reading' by the great impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). And Madame Monet is of course the wife of his contemporary, the equally great Claude Monet. This is Monet's first wife, the beautiful Camille Doncieux, who was a teenager when she met the painter, became his model and his mistress, and married him in 1870. Sadly, after giving birth to two children, Camille died in 1879 aged just thirty-one.
There's a very interesting article about Camille here, and you can see all of Monet's paintings of her, including the heartbreaking one he painted after her death, here.
