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Claude Monet (artist) French, 1840 - 1926 Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day, 1903 oil on canvas Overall: 65.1 x 100 cm (25 5/8 x 39 3/8 in.) framed: 84.4 x 120 cm (33 1/4 x 47 1/4 in.) Chester Dale Collection 1963.10.183 |
Object 6 of 7
With their smokestacks, barge traffic, and busy bridges, Monet’s London paintings were emphatically urban—the only urban subjects he painted after the 1870s. After returning to France following the Franco-Prussian War, he moved from Paris, preferring to live nearer the countryside. His interest in London and its light-filtering fog may have been spurred by admiration for English artist J. M. W. Turner, whose influential paintings of the Thames can be seen in our collection. Turner’s luminous views presented a challenge many landscape painters were eager to confront. By the 1890s, paintings of the London fog were far from new. A series of Nocturnes by America expatriate James McNeill Whistler, a friend of Monet, had further increased their popularity.
Like Whistler, most artists used a subdued palette and a limited range of colors to reproduce the grayness of the city. Monet’s London paintings are quite different. Even to these subjects dulled by fog and coal dust, he brought an eye that saw color in every form. Drifting mists are painted with delicate shades of lilac and pink, and the sky is tinged with pale olive. The shaded arches of the bridge are darkened with blues, not black, and its traffic is highlighted with brilliant flecks of scarlet.
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