Alice Hoschedé

[3][4] After meeting her future daughter-in-law in 1863, Ernest Hoschedé's mother wrote of Alice: This young woman has wit, intelligence in plenty and, I believe, strength of will.

[2]Her children (by Ernest Hoschedé) were Blanche (who married Claude's son, Jean Monet), Germaine, Suzanne, Marthe, Jean-Pierre, and Jacques.

[22] There were times when Ernest Hoschedé returned to visit his wife and children at the successive Monet households of Vétheuil, Poissy and Giverny.

The separation from Alice, though, left Monet greatly distressed, experiencing nightmares, and generally unable to paint.

[23] Monet's last campaign at Etretat coincides with the presence of Ernest Hoschedé at the birthday celebration of his wife at Giverny.

Monet is "annihilated" by this development, and although he acknowledges that it would be better not to send Mme Hoschedé such a bleak account, he cannot resist acquainting her of his pain.

[27] Madam Hoschedé came from an upper-middle-class family, and despite the irregular character of her relationship with Monet (until their marriage in 1892) she brought their home an element of respectability that the people of the village could accept more easily than they might have the casual, vaguely scandalous air of an "artistic" household... With affectionate authority she supervised the education not only of her own six children but of Monet's two sons.