7th January 2025

My step-daughter very kindly bought me a birthday present last year, tickets for an exhibition of Monet’s paintings of London at the Courtauld Gallery.

Monet was fascinated by the effects of  sunlight. He loved its interaction with the fog and the smoke belching from the factories on the South Bank. Between 1899 and 1901, he made three extended trips to London to try and paint the effects. He stayed at the Savoy and set his easel up on a balcony overlooking the river. (No starving in a garret by this stage of his career) During his stays, he produced over a hundred unfinished canvases. From these, he eventually produced a series of thirty-seven paintings called View of the Thames. The paintings concentrate on just three sites, Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. The views of the Houses of Parliament were painted from a terrace at St Thomas Hospital, on the South Bank.

The paintings were exhibited in Paris in 1904. The exhibition was a critical and commercial success. He had plans to repeat the exhibition in London in 1905. The plans fell through because of the commercial success of the Paris exhibition. (He couldn’t borrow back enough of the paintings he had sold) One hundred and twenty years later, twenty of the thirty-seven paintings are back together in London. The Courtauld Gallery is in Somerset House. It is about one hundred meters down river from the Savoy hotel, where they were originally painted.

The Exhibition.

The source of the paintings is familiar, as are the paintings themselves. With Monet’s views of the Thames it is difficult to feel surprised by any individual piece. But when presented with the ensemble, it is hard not to be impressed

Although there are only three subjects, Monet imbues each painting with a different feel. Although Monet admired J.M.W. Turner, he never claimed him as an influence. Nevertheless, many of the paintings have a Turneresque feel to them. Though Turner only painted the Old Parliamentary buildings on fire

The paintings of the bridges show that the sun does come out (occasionally).

The Waterloo Bridge that Monet painted was replaced by the current bridge in 1934 because of structural problems. Waterloo Bridge was falling down

Having completed his London series, Monet went on to work on his Waterlilies series, which took up his remaining years. In many of the paintings, but especially in the ones above, you can see the development of blending water, sky, and sunlight. That became one of the features of his Waterlilies.

It was an enjoyable, if not overly challenging exhibition. Not every exhibition has to be challenging or ground breaking.

The Courtauld website has a virtual tour of the exhibition, which is rather good.

The permanent collection is also worth an hour or two of your time.

We couldn’t get onto a balcony at the Savoy, so we did our modern-day take on the scene from Waterloo Bridge. Fortunately, we no longer have the air pollution that created the effects that fascinated and, to an extent, frustrated. Monet. He found it frustrating because the light changed every five minutes.