| Jean Monet | |
| Birth Date: | 8 August 1867 |
| Birth Place: | Paris |
| Occupation: | Chemist |
| Parents: | Claude Monet Camille Doncieux |
| Relatives: | Michel Monet (brother) |
Jean Monet (August 8, 1867 – February 10, 1914) was the elder son of French Impressionist artist Claude Monet and Camille Doncieux Monet and the brother of Michel Monet. He was the subject of several paintings by his father and married his step-sister, Blanche Hoschedé.
Jean Monet was born to Camille Doncieux and Claude Monet on August 8, 1867. During that summer Claude Monet was staying at his father's house in Sainte-Adresse, a suburb of Le Havre. Monet went to Paris for the birth of Jean and returned to Sainte-Adresse on the 12th of the month.[1]
The first portrait that Monet made of his son was of the four-month-old Jean Monet in His Cradle. Alongside Jean was a woman Julie Vellay, a companion of Camille Pissarro, rather than his mother. According to Mary Mathews Gedo, author of Monet and his Muse: Camile Monet in the Artist's Life:
The identification of Jean's attendant as someone other than his mother seems entirely consistent with what would prove to be Monet's future insistence on depicting Camille as 'unmother'. Mother and son were only shown in the same physical space in one painting during the Argenteuil years by Monet, The Luncheon.[2]
In 1868, after having left Paris to escape creditors and find more affordable housing, the three moved to Gloton, a small scenic village near Bennecourt. They were thrown out of the inn they were staying in for non-payment. Camille and Jean were able to stay with someone in the country, while Monet tried to obtain monies for survival. However, without money for a medical treatment, Jean became quite ill. After a dramatic period experienced by Camille and Jean, Claude was able to obtain funds for housing for his family in Le Havre.[3]
His parents were married on June 28, 1870.
When Jean was a young child his mother and father had fled France during the Franco-Prussian War. They returned by the summer of 1872 when Claude painted his five-year-old son on a hobby horse in the garden of the home the family rented in Argenteuil near Paris. Claude Monet kept the painting, and never exhibited it, throughout his life.[4]
He trained to be a chemist in Switzerland.[5]
Monet married his step-sister, the painter Blanche Hoschedé, in 1897. They lived in Rouen, where Jean worked for his uncle Léon Monet as a chemist,[6] and Beaumont-le-Roger until 1913.
The couple visited Giverny on weekends.
Jean suffered an illness for a period of time and died on February 10, 1914.[7]
Paintings by Claude Monet of his son: