It looks as though Alice Monet smeared some strawberry jam onto what is an otherwise gray and gloomy scene in Claude Monet’s The Red Kerchief.

She didn’t, but it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility because Monet’s second wife Alice was next-level jealous of his former flame and muse, Camille Monet. But let’s get to that in a sec’.

In the 1870s, Monet, Camille, and their son Jean relocated to the gorgeous town of Argenteuil, south of Paris. It was the perfect place for a man who enjoyed painting outside in the natural light, like in his 1874 painting Women in the Garden, which features a happy Camille. The relationship, however, hadn’t always been picture-perfect.

Born Camille Doncieux, our subject met Monet through Frédéric Bazille when she was eighteen years old and he was seven years her senior. She had a good gig, working as a model for the budding Impressionist, and eventually scoring some work with Pierre-Auguste Renoir. For the longest time, she remained Monet’s mistress and eventually became his wife to legitimize his son, Jean, their child. Because of this secrecy, Camille couldn’t really show herself in polite society. Monet's father wanted Claude to break things off with a heavily pregnant Camille, so he kept her a secret from his family in order to avoid risking the loss of his allowance money. Although for a long time he struggled to  accept responsibility of having a new fam’, he would eventually marry Camille in 1870, about three years after Jean was born. Monet’s bitter family refused to attend the wedding, but that’s fine because the happy couple had Gustave Courbet to stand as a witness. The family should have been happy that Monet escaped military service; as a married man he didn’t have to enlist in the Franco-Prussian war.

Monet depicts his beloved on this winter day in Argenteuil as though he holds a Kodak camera in his hand rather than a paintbrush. Like a snapshot, he captures the moment his wife saunters past the window-paned door on a snowy day. She gazes into the house at her husband almost longingly. It is simply a passing glance, a quickly captured moment of connection that epitomizes Monet's Impressionist style (note the swiftly applied daubs of paint that represent snowy leaves on the trees behind her), and also gives us insight into the couple's private home life, which Monet often painted while away from the excitement of Paris.

It’s not the only time Monet paints Camille, capturing her in delightful outdoor scenes, and then tragically on her deathbed. The Red Kerchief (also known as The Red Cape) is one of the paintings Monet refused to sell and never exhibited. Cherishing the portrait, he kept it all to himself. However, Monet must have kept The Red Kerchief low-key, or hung it up in his studio after his second wife Alice died, as Alice was envious of Camille and all the love Monet held for her, even going so far as to destroy Monet's photographs of his late wife.