Detail of Jean Monet on his Hobby Horse by Monet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2018

Title: Jean Monet (1867–1914) on His Hobby Horse

Artist: Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)

Date: 1872

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 23 7/8 x 29 1/4 in. (60.6 x 74.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Sara Lee Corporation, 2000

Accession Number: 2000.195

Monet painted this picture of his elder son, Jean, in the summer of 1872, not long after the artist and his family returned to France from self-imposed exile during the Franco-Prussian War. Thanks to the efforts of the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, the painter’s finances had begun to improve, enabling the once-impoverished Monets to rent a house in Argenteuil, an agreeable suburb northwest of Paris. For this portrait, Monet posed the five-year-old Jean in the garden of their new home. Monet never exhibited the painting but kept it throughout his life.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438435