Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1866) at the Musée d'Orsay is a surviving fragment of Monet's enormous canvas—originally approximately four by six meters—painted in direct response to Manet's scandalous 1863 painting of the same title. Monet's version was bourgeois and un-scandalous, depicting fashionably dressed figures picnicking in the Forest of Fontainebleau, attempting to bring the large-format Salon ambition to open-air painting. The canvas proved too large to transport and was left folded with a friend; when Monet reclaimed it years later it had suffered from damp and he cut the canvas into surviving sections, this large fragment being deposited at the Orsay. It is a key document of early Impressionism.

The surviving fragment shows Monet's early command of dappled light falling through forest foliage onto the white tablecloth and figures. Light effects are ambitious but still dependent on tonal contrast rather than the full optical color of his mature work. The figures are handled with unusual care and finish for Monet.