https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/claude-monet-caricatures/ * Home * Essays * Collections * Explore * Sources * Shop * Support PDR * About * Blog Search Search The Public Domain Review [ ][View All Results] The Public Domain Review The Public Domain Review PDRSupport PDR * Essays * Collections * Explore * Sources * Shop * About * Blog * * * * * * Text reads 'Coming April 14th... Something Mini' where the word 'BIG' has been crossed out for mini. The bottom edges of three books with the text 'PDR Press Mini' are cropped at the top of the image. Text reads 'Coming April 14th... Something Mini' where the word 'BIG' has been crossed out for mini. The bottom edges of three books with the text 'PDR Press Mini' are cropped at the top of the image. Collections / Images Doing Impressions: Monet's Early Caricatures (ca. late 1850s) Caricature of a butterfly-man At the age of fifteen, Claude Monet was, by his own account, one of the most successful artists in Le Havre. Crowds would gather in the Norman port city to gawk at the pictures he sold through a framing shop: not paintings of haystacks or of the sea or water lilies, but slightly cruel caricatures of local bigwigs and minor celebrities. He had already learned to commercialize, charging his customers 20 francs (around 200EUR in today's money). "If I had continued", he claimed to an interviewer in Le Temps almost fifty years later, "I would have been a millionaire." Spurred by profits, the young Monet was productive, creating up to seven or eight of these caricatures a day; a small collection of them is now held at the Art Institute of Chicago, most donated by the former mayor Carter Harrison IV (1860-1953). The French art historian Rodolphe Walter has claimed that his caricatures constituted a "clandestine apprenticeship", the first attempts by a son of Le Havre's bourgeois shipbuilders to make his way in the art world. The earliest are anonymous: the identities of The Man in the Small Hat or The Man with the Big Cigar are now lost, although the framing shop devotees may well have been able to name them. Some of the works are imitations, like the 1859 drawing of the French journalist August Vacquerie (1819-1895) that Monet seems to have copied from Nadar (1820-1910), probably the period's most famous caricaturist. Monet's own 1858 caricature of Leon Manchon, the treasurer of Le Havre's Societe des amis des arts, captures his subject's appearance but also, in the background, both his love of the arts and his work as a notary. Most fantastical is the 1858 caricature of Jules Didier (1831-1914), which shows the 1857 winner of the Prix de Rome as a "Butterfly Man" being led on a leash by a dog. Monet scholars remain divided as to the symbolic meaning of the iconography, though more obviously derisive is the drawing of a dejected fellow applicant to an 1858 Le Havre art subsidy, Henri Cassinelli. Monet has captioned it "Rufus Croutinelli": a slightly forced pun on "croute", meaning a daub of paint. Monet didn't receive the subsidy either. Sixty-year-old Monet's claims about how he could have made his young fortune probably had more to do with his later difficulties in selling Impressionism than the actual fortunes to be made in portraits-charge, but it was the roughly 2,000 francs (20,000EUR) from selling these caricatures that allowed him to, against his father's wishes, move to Paris and begin training as an artist. (He also received a pension from his wealthy aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre, with whom he had been living since his mother's death in 1857.) Perhaps it helped him in other ways as well. In the Le Temps interview, Monet claimed that it was while admiring his admirers at the framing shop window that he first encountered the work of his mentor Eugene Boudin (1824-1898), whose paintings were also hung there. Boudin would later take him en plein air for the first time. Perhaps, too, there's something in the quickness of the caricature that speaks to what Impressionism would become -- a desire to capture not just the literal appearance of a thing, but its true essence. Text by Mathilde Montpetit Enjoyed this piece? We need your help to keep publishing. The PDR is a non-profit project kept alive by reader donations - no ads, no paywalls, just the generosity of our community. It's a really exciting model, but we need your help to keep it thriving. Visit our support page to become a Friend and receive our themed postcard packs . Or give a one-off donation. Already a supporter? A huge thank you for making all this possible. Support PDR Medium * Images Theme * Humour & Satire * People * Music & Arts Style * Printmaking & Line Epoch * 19th Century Tags art19nadar2france23faces6 Source Source Art Institute Chicago * Art Institute Chicago logo More Art Institute Chicago content on PDR (4) Rights Underlying Work PD Worldwide Rights No Additional Rights Digital Copy * Labelled CC0 license by source Rights * See their general rights page * We offer this info as guidance only Download Download Right click on image or see source for higher-res versions [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of Leon Manchon, 1858. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of Jules Didier, ca. 1858. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of a Man with a Big Cigar, ca. 1855-56. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet after Etienne Carjat, Caricature of Mario Uchard, ca. 1858. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of a Man in the Small Hat, ca. 1855-56. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of Henri Cassinelli ("Rufus Croutinelli"), ca. 1858. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of a Man Standing by Desk, ca. 1855-56. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of a Man with a Large Nose, ca. 1855-56. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet, Caricature of Eugene Marcel, ca. 1855-56. [claude-mon]Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Claude Monet after Nadar, Caricature of Auguste Vacquerie, ca. 1859. Published Mar 25, 2026 If You Liked This... Hand holding envelope Get Our Newsletter Our latest content, your inbox, every fortnight Privacy Policy More Info [ ][ ] HP[ ] [Subscribe] Become a Friend of the PDRPostcardsJoin our community of supporters and receive our themed postcard packs, delivered to your door twice a year. Friends also enjoy 15% off all prints.Find Out More Ancient Courses print Shop Our Range of PrintsPremium prints using pigment-based archival inks (Giclee process) on high grade heavyweight art paper. Available as unframed or framed and ready to hang.Free Shipping to US, UK, EU, Canada, and Australia. The Public Domain Review The Public Domain Review is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#11386184), a category of company which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose. 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