Claude Monet - Leon Monet Playing Cards

Portrait of Léon Monet (Portrait de Léon Monet), 1874 - Claude Monet, oil on canvas. Claude Monet (Paris, 1840 - Giverny, 1926) was a French Impressionist painter. The sitter was Monet's elder brother Léon, a colour chemist, Rouen industrialist and important early supporter of the Impressionists. In 1872 Léon founded the Société Industrielle de Rouen and began actively collecting works by Claude and his friends. Claude's energetic 1874 portrait therefore records more than a family likeness: it represents a brother whose professional life was also centred on modern colour. The painting was shown to the public for the first time in a major exhibition devoted to Léon in 2023 and entered a public collection the following year.