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Claude Monet (artist) French, 1840 - 1926 Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Sunlight, 1894 oil on canvas Overall: 100.1 x 65.8 cm (39 3/8 x 25 7/8 in.) framed: 127.6 x 91.4 cm (50 1/4 x 36 in.) Chester Dale Collection 1963.10.179 |
In late January or early February 1892, Monet rented rooms across from Rouen cathedral. He remained until spring, painting its looming facade many times, most often as we see it here, close up and cropped at the sides. The next winter he returned to paint the cathedral again, making in all more than thirty views of it. But it was not so much the deeply carved Gothic facade that was Monet’s subject as it was the atmosphere—the enveloppe—that surrounded the building. “To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor,” Monet said. “What I want to reproduce is what exists between the motif and me.”
He worked on a number of canvases simultaneously, moving from one to the next as the light and weather changed. From the late 1860s Monet had attempted to transcribe his sensory impression of the landscape, but his intentions now were different. He continued to claim that his works were spontaneous records of his visual experience, but increasingly he elaborated them in the studio, emphasizing the subjectivity of his vision.