Boy in the Country

Prints and Drawings

1857

Claude Monet
French, 1840–1926

This energetic study comes from a sketchbook that Monet kept when he was no more than 17 years old. Since none of his paintings from this period survive, the work offers a rare glimpse of his early talent. His chosen subject—perhaps a native of his coastal hometown, Le Havre—could well have been captured spontaneously. The boy’s clothing obscures his anatomy, but the outlines of his smock are crisp and decisive. It seems as if the artist applied considerable pressure to the pencil. In describing the tufts of grass, he appears to have indented the page.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Claude Monet
Title: Boy in the Country
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1857
Medium: Graphite on ivory wove paper
Dimensions: 30.7 × 23 cm (12 1/8 × 9 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Reference Number: 2013.985
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/186315/manifest.json

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Catalogue raisonné, vol. 5 (Lausanne: Bibliotheque des arts, 1991), p. 72, cat. D70.
“Cat. 11: Boy in the Country,” in Monet Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Gloria Groom and Jill Shaw (Art Institute of Chicago, 2014), https://publications.artic.edu/monet/reader/paintingsanddrawings/section/135470.

New York, Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, French Master Drawings: Renaissance to Modern, Feb. 10–Mar. 7, 1959, no. 130, as Peasant Boy.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, June 3–July 30, 2006, p. 107, cat. 72 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, “The Thrill of the Chase: Drawings for the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection”, March 15 - June 15, 2014.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Monet and Chicago,” Sept. 5, 2020-June 14, 2021.

Estate of the artist [estate stamp (Lugt 1819b), recto, lower right, in black]; by descent to his son, Michel Monet (1878–1966), Giverny [Wildenstein 1991]. Samuel (1891–1971) and Saidye Bronfman, Montreal, by 1959 [New York 1959]. Sold, Christie’s, London, Dec. 3, 1996, lot 105, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.

Wildenstein D70

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.