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Lot Essay
“I adore London, it is a mass, an ensemble, and it is so simple. What I like most of all in London is the fog... I so love London!” (quoted in Monet's London: Artists' Reflections on the Thames, 1859-1914, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2005, p. 33). Monet’s impassioned declaration is masterfully conveyed in La Tamise, which is a pastel study for the artist’s monumental, landmark series of London views, the Vues de Londres. Begun in London in 1899, and continued in two more stays in the city in 1900 and 1901, this series remains one of the artist’s greatest achievements, as he transformed the city and its famed fog-filled skies into ethereal, near abstract visions at once timeless and modern.
The largest body of paintings the artist had yet produced, numbering almost a hundred canvases, the London series is comprised of three principal subjects: Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. This ambitious campaign pushed Monet to the extremes of his artistic powers, testing the fundamental Impressionist tenet of capturing the ephemeral, fleeting atmospheric effects of nature. “This goes further than painting,” the art critic Arsène Alexandre described of these works. “It’s an enchantment of atmosphere and light. London appeared fantastic in its fogs of dream, colored by the magic of the sun” (quoted in G. Seiberling, Monet in London, exh. cat., High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1988, p. 35).
Of the three London motifs, the Waterloo Bridge series is the largest group (Wildenstein, vol. III, nos. 1555-1595). With their expansive skies and wide stretches of rippling water with shimmering light reflections, these works are among the most radical and varied, as well as being the most deeply poetic. Working from the Savoy Hotel, set on the banks of the Thames just behind the Strand, Monet could admire the heart of London stretched before him, the panorama bathed in the pale winter sun diffused through a dense atmosphere of mist mingled with coal smoke from domestic fires and industrial furnaces.
Looking to the right, Monet would have seen the Houses of Parliament rising impressively beyond the iron structure of Charing Cross railway bridge; to the left, the looming arches of Waterloo Bridge framed by a plethora of factory chimneys complete with bellowing plumes of smoke that lined the south banks of the river eastwards into the City and beyond. While it is above all a sense of modernity that Monet captured in the Charing Cross scenes, the newly constructed metal bridge with traffic rushing over infusing the paintings with a sense of modernity and dynamism, and in contrast to the solemn grandeur of the Houses of Parliament group, the Waterloo Bridge pictures present a pure meditation on the effects of color, light, and atmosphere. In his quest to render an impression of the intangible realm, the “effet” of the fluctuating fog that lay before him, Monet was attempting the impossible. A fleeting vista of industrial London is transformed into a mysterious and deeply contemplative evocation that transcends the bounds of time and place.
Monet’s experiments in pastel may be traced back to the influence of one of his earliest mentors, the pioneering plein-air painter, Eugène Boudin. According to several sources, Monet first met Boudin when he was just seventeen years old, at a busy shop in the center of Le Havre where both artists were exhibiting their work. Impressed by Monet’s caricatures, Boudin encouraged the young man to take his art further and invited him on a short painting excursion he was planning to take in the landscapes around the coastal town a few weeks later. Largely self-taught, Boudin’s practice was firmly rooted in the close, palpable experience of his motifs, be they boats, harbors, beaches, towns or people, a technique that proved revelatory for the young Monet. In Boudin’s eyes, “everything painted directly on the spot always has a strength, a power, a vividness of touch that one doesn’t find again in the studio” (quoted in J.A. Ganz and R. Kendall, The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2007, p. 61). Central to Boudin’s practice was the use of pastels to record his experiences, their pliable texture and soft finish allowing him to respond to the swiftly changing scene. These studies could then be used as the inspiration for future canvases, or as an aide-de-memoire in the studio, feeding Boudin’s creativity long after the scene had altered and disappeared. In pastels such as the present work, Monet’s bold approach to color owes a clear debt to Boudin, its use of richly saturated hues echoing the sumptuous tones of the older painter’s work in pastel. However, Monet pushes his colors to new levels of intensity, while simultaneously achieving a complexity of facture that rivals the dynamism of his oil paintings of the period.
The largest body of paintings the artist had yet produced, numbering almost a hundred canvases, the London series is comprised of three principal subjects: Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. This ambitious campaign pushed Monet to the extremes of his artistic powers, testing the fundamental Impressionist tenet of capturing the ephemeral, fleeting atmospheric effects of nature. “This goes further than painting,” the art critic Arsène Alexandre described of these works. “It’s an enchantment of atmosphere and light. London appeared fantastic in its fogs of dream, colored by the magic of the sun” (quoted in G. Seiberling, Monet in London, exh. cat., High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1988, p. 35).
Of the three London motifs, the Waterloo Bridge series is the largest group (Wildenstein, vol. III, nos. 1555-1595). With their expansive skies and wide stretches of rippling water with shimmering light reflections, these works are among the most radical and varied, as well as being the most deeply poetic. Working from the Savoy Hotel, set on the banks of the Thames just behind the Strand, Monet could admire the heart of London stretched before him, the panorama bathed in the pale winter sun diffused through a dense atmosphere of mist mingled with coal smoke from domestic fires and industrial furnaces.
Looking to the right, Monet would have seen the Houses of Parliament rising impressively beyond the iron structure of Charing Cross railway bridge; to the left, the looming arches of Waterloo Bridge framed by a plethora of factory chimneys complete with bellowing plumes of smoke that lined the south banks of the river eastwards into the City and beyond. While it is above all a sense of modernity that Monet captured in the Charing Cross scenes, the newly constructed metal bridge with traffic rushing over infusing the paintings with a sense of modernity and dynamism, and in contrast to the solemn grandeur of the Houses of Parliament group, the Waterloo Bridge pictures present a pure meditation on the effects of color, light, and atmosphere. In his quest to render an impression of the intangible realm, the “effet” of the fluctuating fog that lay before him, Monet was attempting the impossible. A fleeting vista of industrial London is transformed into a mysterious and deeply contemplative evocation that transcends the bounds of time and place.
Monet’s experiments in pastel may be traced back to the influence of one of his earliest mentors, the pioneering plein-air painter, Eugène Boudin. According to several sources, Monet first met Boudin when he was just seventeen years old, at a busy shop in the center of Le Havre where both artists were exhibiting their work. Impressed by Monet’s caricatures, Boudin encouraged the young man to take his art further and invited him on a short painting excursion he was planning to take in the landscapes around the coastal town a few weeks later. Largely self-taught, Boudin’s practice was firmly rooted in the close, palpable experience of his motifs, be they boats, harbors, beaches, towns or people, a technique that proved revelatory for the young Monet. In Boudin’s eyes, “everything painted directly on the spot always has a strength, a power, a vividness of touch that one doesn’t find again in the studio” (quoted in J.A. Ganz and R. Kendall, The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2007, p. 61). Central to Boudin’s practice was the use of pastels to record his experiences, their pliable texture and soft finish allowing him to respond to the swiftly changing scene. These studies could then be used as the inspiration for future canvases, or as an aide-de-memoire in the studio, feeding Boudin’s creativity long after the scene had altered and disappeared. In pastels such as the present work, Monet’s bold approach to color owes a clear debt to Boudin, its use of richly saturated hues echoing the sumptuous tones of the older painter’s work in pastel. However, Monet pushes his colors to new levels of intensity, while simultaneously achieving a complexity of facture that rivals the dynamism of his oil paintings of the period.