Monet’s ‘invisible’ big brother the subject of new Paris exhibition highlighting ‘critical’ role he played in Impressionist Claude’s life and art

Rich colour chemist Leon Monet financed his younger brother’s early art career and created the synthetic colour palette that became a staple of Impressionism

Paris’ Musée du Luxembourg’s new exhibition reveals the hitherto unknown importance of the older Monet sibling through a series of works and documents

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Leon Monet’s portrait by his brother Claude has never before been seen by the public, and features in the new exhibition at Paris’ Musée du Luxembourg which highlights the key role the ‘invisible’ Monet played in the development of Impressionism. Photo: AP

Published: 5:15pm, 20 Mar 2023

Behind some great men, there is a bigger brother.

Claude Monet’s older sibling is the focus of a landmark Paris exhibition illuminating the hitherto unknown role Leon Monet played in the French Impressionist painter’s life and art.

Leon – a colour chemist four years his senior – is now understood to have been critical in the emergence of Monet’s commercial success as well as the famed colour palette that created masterpieces like the Water Lilies series.

“It’s never been known before, but without Leon there would not have really been a Monet – the artist the world knows today,” says Geraldine Lefebvre, the show’s curator at the Musee du Luxembourg.

A painting pallet belonging to Claude Monet features in the exhibition. His big brother Leon was responsible for creating the cutting-edge synthetic colour palette key to the painter’s success. Photo: AP

“His rich big brother supported him in the first period of his life when he had no money or clients and was starving,” she says. “But more than that. The vivid palette Monet was famous for came from the synthetic textile dye colours Leon created” in the town of Rouen – site of some of Claude’s best-known paintings.