Blanche Hoschedé Monet

Blanche Hoschedé Monet (10 November 1865 – 8 December 1947) was a French painter who was both the stepdaughter and the daughter-in-law of Claude Monet.

Blanche Hoschedé was born in Paris, the second daughter of Ernest Hoschedé and Alice Hoschedé. Ernest was a businessman, a department store magnate in Paris. He collected impressionist paintings and was an important patron to Claude Monet early in his career. In 1876, he commissioned Claude Monet to paint decorative panels in the round drawing room, in his residence, the château de Rottembourg, in Montgeron. In 1877, Ernest Hoschedé went bankrupt and his art collection was auctioned off.

Ernest Hoschedé, Alice, and their six children moved into a house in Vétheuil with Monet, his wife Camille, and their two sons, Jean and the infant Michel. Ernest, however, spent most of his time in Paris, and eventually went to Belgium. After the death of Camille in Vétheuil on 5 September 1879, Alice and her children continued living with Monet. In 1881, they moved to Poissy, and finally settled in Giverny in 1883. Although Ernest & Alice Hoschedé never divorced, Claude Monet and Alice went on living together until after the death of Ernest in 1891. Claude Monet and Alice Hoschedé got married on 16 July 1892.

The only child in the Hoschedé-Monet household to become interested in art, Blanche began painting at the age of eleven and developed a fond relationship with Claude Monet. She visited his studio as well as Édouard Manet's. By the time she was 17 years old, she was Monet's assistant and only student, often painting en plein air alongside him, painting the same subject with the same colors.

Blanche also painted alongside American expatriates Theodore Earl Butler and John Leslie Breck. Monet stopped the romance that had developed between Blanche and Breck, while he allowed Butler to marry Blanche’s sister, Suzanne Hoschedé, in 1892.

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