Chapter One Summary

The story begins with the artist, Claude Lantier, walking home late at night in Paris during a rainstorm. He considers himself a loser and is somewhat irascible as he trudges across the Seine on his way to his cheap studio flat after his night out on the town with friends. What troubles him is a rather large canvas he has been unable to complete. The painting is obscure in its meaning. It involves a park landscape, a fully clothed man watching two nude women frolic in the distance, and a nude woman reclining in the foreground. It is the reclining woman that has given him so much trouble. His painting style is revolutionary with vivid color and heavy brush strokes, offering an avant-guarde rejection of the Romanticism preferred by the École des Beaux-Arts.

Already in a foul mood, Claude finds a...