Claude Monet: From one painting to many visions

The text below is the excerpt of the book Claude Monet (ISBN: 9781783101849), written by Nathalia Brodskaya and Nina Kalitina, published by Parkstone International.

The idea of creating the series came to Claude Monet in 1892 while he was staying in Rouen, where, enchanted by the cathedral, he lodged directly opposite it. From the window of his room he could see not the whole building but only the portal, and this determined the composition of the canvases in the first part of the cycle. In these the artist’s field of vision is invariably limited to the portal and the patch of sky above it. It is a “close-up” composition with a part of the cathedral, transformed by the skilled hands of mason and sculptor into stone lacework, occupying the entire area of the canvas. Previously, looking from a cliff, a hill or the window of a room, he liked to impart a sense of space by leaving the foreground free.

Now the subject was approached at almost point-blank range, and yet its proximity did not help to elucidate its nature, for light hardly reduced it.

The other part of the cycle was produced in 1893 during a second visit to Rouen, when Monet took with him the canvases he had already executed, intending to add the finishing touches to them. He again studied the movement of light across the portal and, when he saw the effect he wanted, finished the work he had begun a year earlier; where the moment from the past did not recur, he took a fresh canvas and started again from scratch.

During this second visit Claude Monet did not only paint the cathedral from the viewpoint he had used in 1892; he rented another apartment as well, one which enjoyed a slightly different view of the building.

From here a considerable portion of Saint-Romain’s tower was visible to the left of the entrance, and also some houses situated close to the tower. On both his first and second visits Monet turned to his Cathedrals with an enthusiasm which bordered on frenzy. “I am worn out, I can’t go on,” he wrote to his wife in 1892. “And, something that I have never experienced before, I have spent a night filled with nightmarish dreams: the cathedral kept falling on me, and at times it seemed blue, at others pink, at others yellow.”

The following words come from a letter dated 1893: “I am painting like a madman, but no matter what you all say I am quite played out and am now good for nothing else.”

What is known of the creation of the Rouen Cathedral series and other pictures of these years makes it clear that Claude Monet could now not only paint on the spot, but could continue work in his workshop, then return to paintings on location, and then again add finishing touches in the studio. Monet had worked in the studio previously – although to all questions put to him on this point he invariably replied that nature was his workshop – but with the years, work in the studio became increasingly important for the artist.

It is unlikely that the canvases executed in Rouen in 1892 remained untouched in Giverny, and it is certain that after his return from the second visit to Rouen he was still bringing them to perfection.

One cannot disagree with Pissarro’s judgement that the Cathedrals series must create its strongest impression when all twenty canvases are collected together — alas, a spectacle almost unrealisable today, since the paintings are scattered among numerous museums and private collections throughout the world. Best endowed in this respect is the Musée d’Orsay in Paris which holds five paintings: Rouen Cathedral in Cloudy Weather, Rouen Cathedral in the Morning: Harmony in White, Rouen Cathedral in Morning Sunlight: Harmony in Blue, Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight: Harmony in Blue and Gold, and the cathedral without indication of the time it was painted, a work known as Harmony in Brown. The gaze of the visitor to the museum passes quickly from one picture to the next, then returns and runs again across the uneven surface of the canvases, studying the changes of light. The repeated motif of the portal, painted, moreover, on vertical canvases of approximately uniform dimensions, recedes, in proportion to the length of time spent in contemplation, further and further into the background, until the viewer is wholly enthralled by the astonishing skill of the painter.

In the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow there are two paintings from the series, Rouen Cathedral at Noon and Rouen Cathedral in the Evening. The intense blue of the sky above, the dark-blue and violet shadows below, and between them a scattering of golden, pink and slightly lilac tones, alternating with light sprinklings of pale blue – these are the colours Claude Monet used to reproduce the façade of the cathedral in the evening.

Darker blue and lilac tones are distinctly more evident in the second painting, where pinks are almost extinguished and gold is shot with orange and red.

To get a better insight into Claude Monet, please continue this exciting adventure by clicking on:

Ebook

Hardcover

Take a look at our other titles on Monet: