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After a few pictures painted in the 1860s, Monet dispensed almost entirely with figures in his works, devoting himself to landscape painting. However, when he did include large figures in his landscape paintings, as started to happen again in the 1880s, he treated them as if they were an element in the landscape. Around the mid-1880s, Monet reverted to the beginnings of his career as an artist and took up figure painting once more.
In the two open air studies, Woman with a Parasol, Turned to the Left, and Woman with a Parasol, Turned to the Right, Monet was fascinated by the very low viewpoint from which the model is shown; she stands on a riverbank against a background of pale blue sky. The young woman in both pictures is Suzanne Hoschedé, one of the daughters of Alice Hoschedé, who was to become Monet's second wife in 1889. His future stepdaughter Suzanne was to be for a long time one of the painter's favourite models.
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