Blanche Hoschedé-Monet has barely been acknowledged in art history. But not only did she help her stepfather Claude, she created her own fine works – often of the same scenes as him.

Haystack at Giverny, Poplars at the Water's Edge, Morning on the Seine. These painting titles bring only one name to mind – the great Claude Monet, whose flickering evocations of light and atmosphere are the cornerstone of Impressionism.

But while Monet painted these very subjects, the paintings belong to the oeuvre of his stepdaughter, and subsequently daughter-in-law, Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (1865–1947). She learned to paint at Monet's shoulder, and exhibited and sold her work through the leading Parisian dealers of the time. Her finest paintings suggest an artist of such flair that you wonder how she has slipped from history's grasp.

A new exhibition and accompanying monograph – the artist's first – seeks to restore her reputation. Blanche Hoschedé-Monet in the Light at The Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana, brings together 40 of her paintings, along with sketchbooks, photographs and letters, establishing not just her impressionist credentials, but her role as Monet's assistant and companion on plein air painting expeditions – the only one of his children, blood-related or otherwise, whose passion for painting mirrored his own.

The difficulty of extracting Hoschedé-Monet from history has been compounded by the fact that few of her 300-ish works are in public collections. In her native France, the former Musée Municipal de Vernon, near the Normandy village of Giverny, where the Monet family lived for decades, holds the largest number – eight paintings and one pastel – and was valiantly renamed the Musée Blanche Hoschedé-Monet last year to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Impressionism. Meanwhile Paris's Musée d'Orsay (widely regarded as the best collection of Impressionist art) has only a further two – neither of which, at the time of writing, is on display.

There are no Hoschedé-Monet paintings in British public collections at all, and in the US, only one, The Weeping Willows on the Lily Pond at Giverny (c 1893-7) at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. The Indiana exhibition is the artist's first solo show on US soil, in fact, and an indication that her reputation is finally growing.

"While Hoschedé-Monet's work remains relatively unknown and somewhat underappreciated in the marketplace, it is clear that she is gaining more recognition with collectors and institutions," says Julia Leveille, head of modern-day auctions at Sotheby's New York." Strong prices have been set for her work at auction recently, and we are excited to see where her market goes from here."

Hoschedé-Monet was the daughter of Eugene Hoschedé, a wealthy businessman and connoisseur of avant-garde painting. Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt and of course Monet were regular guests at his beautiful homes on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, and at his estate at Montgeron, on the city's edge.

Hoschedé-Monet was 11 when she first met Claude Monet in 1876. The then-35-year-old had been commissioned by her father to paint a quartet of panels for the dining room at Montgeron. Hoschedé was an important early patron of Monet's – in fact, it was he who bought Impression, Sunrise (1872), the painting that gave Impressionism its name.

"I remember his arrival. He was introduced to me as a great artist, and he had long hair," she recollected in autobiographical notes she wrote towards the end of her life, which her brother Jean-Pierre then used as a basis for a personal and intimate account of Monet's life and family at Giverny. " That struck me, and I immediately had sympathy for him because we could tell he was fond of children."

In her notes, Hoschedé-Monet also singled out Monet's Springtime or The Reader (1872) as the painting she loved most in........

© BBC