3 Bad Times and Good Times

Chapter 3 Bad Times and Good Times It is hard to imagine things getting any worse for Monet. And fortunately, at last, his luck changed... at least a little bit. A rich man in Le Havre wanted paintings—paintings by Monet. He wanted some portraits. So Monet did them as fast as he could. The man also bought two paintings of the sea. With this money, Monet rented a cottage for his family in a little town on the coast near Le Havre. He kept on working outside, experiment ing with light and shadows. He studied the light, so he could make the light in his paintings look real. He began to use different colors of paint instead of black to paint shadows. He stopped mixing colors on his palette. Instead he painted pure colors right on the canvas. If he wanted green, Monet put a tiny brush stroke of pure blue paint next to a dot of pure yellow. When he looked at the picture, his eyes

blended the blue and the yellow and saw green. He once said, "When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape." That summer, Monet spent a lot of time with his old friend, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The two painters worked outdoors together, side by side. Monet was still poor. Renoir was poor, too. But he was living with his parents. Sometimes he would bring over bread for Monet's family to keep them from starving. The two friends may have been poor and hungry, but they loved the work they were doing. They both painted pictures of a happy, busy outdoor restaurant on the Seine River. The sun shined on the people and boats and made lovely shadows on the water. Both their paintings of the restaurant would later become famous.

Yet in 1870, once again the Salon rejected Monet's pictures. His best friends—Bazille, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro—all had paintings accepted that year.

It was a hard time. But one good thing happened that year. Camille's parents said they would forgive her and even help support little Jean if she and Monet were married. So that's what Claude and

Camille did. The wedding was in Paris. None of Monet's family came.

The bride and groom and little Jean went to a beach resort near Le Havre. Boudin and his wife joined them there. Monet painted pictures of Camille on the beach. Over the years, he was to paint her many, many times—on hillsides, in poppy fields, with a parasol, in a garden—often with little Jean at her side.