Claude Monet loved London, fascinated by its famous “smog”, the fog caused by industrial pollution that created a mysterious light. For the first time, his paintings of Parliament and the Thames are exhibited in the British capital, as he had wished 120 years ago.
The Impressionist painter came three times for several months between 1899 and 1901 to London, which was then the most populous city in the world and a major industrial center. He wanted to paint the “effects of fog on the Thames” and create a whole series of works on this river.
He stayed at the Savoy Hotel, from where he had a commanding view of Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges.
To paint the Palace of Westminster, the British Parliament, he crossed the river and took up position on a terrace of the Saint Thomas Hospital, which is still in operation.
“Every day I find London more beautiful to paint,” the painter wrote to his daughter-in-law in 1900. In a letter to his wife, he speaks of the ever-changing weather and his fascination with the effects it produced on the Thames.
In 1901, he described to an American journalist the fog that “takes on all sorts of colors”, black, brown, yellow, green, purple. He painted the sun barely breaking through the thick smoke.
One painting shows the outline of Charing Cross Bridge, against a yellow background, probably due to sulphur emissions. The painting was given to Winston Churchill in 1949 by his literary agent, who urged it to “dispel the fog from Westminster”.
– Particles –
Claude Monet’s favourite season in London was winter, when that “fog mixed with the pollution, the smoke from the factories, all the particles in the air,” says Karen Serres, the exhibition’s curator at the Courtauld Gallery.
“What Monet also loved was the moment when the clouds opened a little and a ray of sunshine illuminated the Thames,” she continues.
After his stays in London, Monet returned to Giverny, north of Paris, with dozens of paintings to complete in his studio.
In 1904, about forty paintings of London were exhibited in Paris. Claude Monet wanted to organize this exhibition in London, but it was impossible, because the painter was a victim of his success: the paintings were sold too quickly.
The owner of a painting of Charing Cross Bridge wrote to Monet on his return to England after seeing the exhibition in Paris: “you have allowed us to better understand (…) this magnificent landscape,” he said.
Monet’s London, covered in pollution, seems to be “an enchanted place, which I’m sure was not at all the case for the inhabitants,” underlines the exhibition curator.
This did not prevent the Times critic, who clearly liked the exhibition, from calling for “bringing back the fog”, provided, of course, that it takes on the “enchanting and strange hues” of Claude Monet.
The exhibition ‘Monet and London: Views from the Thames’ runs at the Courtauld Gallery in London from Friday until January 19.
It brings together 21 paintings from private collections and French, American, Irish museums, etc.
