Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Autograph letter signed (‘Claude Monet’) to Frédéric Bazille (‘Mon cher ami’), La Ferme Saint Siméon, Honfleur, 1 December [1866]
In French. 2½ pages, 212 x 131mm, bifolium. Provenance: Sotheby’s, 21 May 1987, lot 280.

A young Claude Monet writes to Frédéric Bazille, mentioning two of his paintings. Monet presumes that Bazille is back in Paris from a trip to Montpellier and asks him to send him 'the canvases which are at your house and of which I have the most urgent need'. He mentions specifically three pictures: one is ‘ma toile du Salon, Camille, avec l'autre toile la femme blanche ... je vais faire sur cette dernière une marine importante et comme vous le voyez je n'ai que juste le temps envoyez moi la petite réduction de Camille que je n’ai pu achever à Paris et qu’il faut que je termine puisque j’en ai été payé’ ('my canvas in the living room, Camille, with the other canvas the white woman ... I am going to do a substantial seascape on the latter and as you see I only just have time; send me the little reduction of Camille which I couldn't finish in Paris and which I have to complete because I've been paid for it'). He asks Bazille to do all this with the greatest possible speed, giving the address of his studio at the Hotel du Cheval Blanc, and finally asking Bazille to try to delay his creditors, and not to allow his possessions to be seized.

The first canvas that Monet mentions is almost certainly his Camille (or The Woman in the Green Dress, Kunsthalle Bremen), painted in 1866 and exhibited the same year at the Paris Salon.