‘Invisible’ Monet, Leon, was key to impressionism

Behind some great men, there is a bigger brother. Claude Monet's older sibling is the focus of a landmark Paris exhibit illuminating the hitherto unknown role Leon Monet played in the French impressionist painter's life and art.

Leon, a color chemist four years his senior, is now understood to have been critical in the emergence of Monet's commercial success as well as the famed color palette that created masterpieces like the "Water Lilies" series.

"It's never been known before, but without Leon there would not have really been a Monet - the artist the world knows today," said Geraldine Lefebvre, exhibit curator at the Musee du Luxembourg.

"His rich big brother supported him in the first period of his life when he had no money or clients and was starving," she said. "But more than that. The vivid palette Monet was famous for came from the synthetic textile dye colors Leon created" in the town of Rouen, site of some of Claude's best-known paintings.

The groundbreaking exhibit is the fruit of years of investigation by Lefebvre, who visited Monet's great-grandchildren, studied family albums and brought to light a masterly portrait of Leon by Claude that Leon hid away in a dusty private collection and has never before been seen by the public. The 1874 painting shows Leon with a black suit, stern expression and red - almost wine-flushed - cheeks.

The exhibit dispels a long-held view that Claude and his older brother were estranged.

"Historians always thought the two brothers had nothing to do with each other. It was assumed because there are no photographs of Claude and Leon together, and no correspondence. In reality, they were incredibly close throughout their life," Lefebvre said.

The brothers had an argument in the...