We are having a bridges moment here at Madeleine’s recently … (here’s our first take on Sydney, focused on the bridge-related activities it does offer).
“Only an eye – but my God, what an eye!” Cézanne had said of Monet.
Monet’s eye on London seemed to have focused on its river, its fog, and its bridges, as we can see in a recent special exhibition at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
This was a get-together of 21 of Monet’s London paintings all in one place, as well as an attempt to re-create an exhibition Monet himself was planning and had intended for 1905 in London’s Dowdeswell Gallery but did not take place, “re-uniting” 18 of the paintings chosen for the exhibition that didn’t take place because Monet no longer had enough paintings he was satisfied with, following his successful sales in Paris the previous year.
Monet’s various impressionistic and “fog-filtered” views of the Thames reminded us a bit of Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji! For a French artist to pay this homage to London, its river as well as the industrial aspect of the city, is arguably even more amazing than Hokusai the Tokyoite’s homage to his country’s most treasured national symbol. But it would probably be more accurate to say these were Monet’s obsessive explorations of light and the various optical properties and effects of light, with the view on the Thames being the vehicle for this homage! In it, we can certainly see the same obsessiveness that was later to be reflected in the artist’s water-lillies series (he painted about 250 of these!), and feel the presence of the same overwhelming feelings we have had standing in front of the wall-to-ceiling canvases of water-lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.
There are various views of Charing Cross Bridge, and there are also various views of Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. Each landmark seems to be both submerged into and suspended in the smog. You can compare the version called “Parliament – Sunlight in the fog” that is from the Musee d’Orsay with the “Houses of Parliament, Sunset” that is from the Masso Plattner Collection and the version called “Houses of Parliament” that is from the Kunstmuseen Krefeld in Germany. You can see that there are certain effects he loves: the sun’s rays filtered through the fog behind Parliament’s Victoria Tower, for example. You could also say this is truly Impressionism: art that captures fleeting moments, en plein air. The artist had said to a journalist in 1901:
“My practiced eye has found that objects change in appearance in a London fog more and quicker than in any other atmosphere, and the difficulty is to get every change down on canvas.”
Well, you almost feel it’s all about the fog: and Monet didn’t think London was beautiful at all without its fog (which most people would call smog). To him, the belching chimneys of the South Bank signalled modernity. London, then the world’s largest city, was at the forefront of the march of progress, and this series captured the brooding power of a city at the height of its economic prowess.
London held a special place in the French master’s creative imagination. Having been enchanted by the city on his first visit in 1870, he returned decades later, three times, in 1899, 1900 and 1901, to obsessively repaint the river Thames. These paintings he left behind were started during those visits:
“It has to be said that the climate is so idiosyncratic … You wouldn’t believe the amazing effects I have seen in the nearly two months that I have been constantly looking at this river Thames.”
Monet had writen to his wife in 1900. Years later, in 1920, he recalled how London’s
“fog gives it its magnificent breadth. Its regular and massive blocks become grandiose within that mysterious cloak.”
Responding to an unpredictable climate, Monet usually stopped and started sketching on several different canvases each day, eventually completing the unfinished works from his studio in Giverny. In the completed works, we find rich colours, a myriad of luminous reflections, flickering water surfaces, a dreaminess, a meditative quality, as if the artist were making a statement about the ephemerality of form.
The Courtauld, of course, couldn’t be a more ideal location, being mere stone’s throw from the artist’s main subjects of Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament, and just a few doors down from Monet’s regular haunt: the Savoy Hotel. Indeed, one can compare and contrast the atmospheric conditions from the same vantage point, some 120 years later, also bearing in mind how, one of the paintings in the exhibition, a view of Charing Cross Bridge, dated 1902 but actually completed in 1923, was actually given to Winston Churchill in 1949 by his literary agent, accompanied by a note urging the ex-prime minister, at that time leader of the opposition party, to “dissipate the fog that shrouds Westminster,” a reference to the U.K.’s seat of power. It still belongs to Churchill’s country house Chartwell, now a National Trust property.
Clearly, one could be walking on today’s Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge – very much standing tall – and be thinking artistic thoughts, or be inspired by how an artist’s interest to capture a city’s modern developments can have an impact that is more than artistic!
P.S. It is of interest to note that the Parliament paintings were mostly made from St Thomas’ hospital – recent research reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, indicated he was working from the administration block on the second floor, the block closest to Westminster bridge, though the hospital was destroyed in the WWII blitz.
