Claude Monet
Waterloo Bridge, London
Oil on canvas. 65.5 x 100.5 cm.
Claude Monet. Painted in 1902
From Giverny Monet undertook many journeys to London, which were significant for his work. He had already
been to England, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, and his encounter with the work of Turner had been
decisive. No one before Turner had seen the landscape so much modified by atmospheric fluctuations, and so to see it
now became Monet’s own purpose.
Between 1900 and 1904 there are done in London series of paintings, like what he had been creating since 1890, of the Houses
of Parliament, the Thames and its bridges.
Bridges for Corot and the School of Fontainebleau are still romantic elements of old cities, but in the 70s bridges,
including modern ones, become one of the classical themes of the Impressionists, to whom they are significant owing to the
play of light around them, on their stone parapets, beneath their shadowy arches, in their reflections on the water and in
the atmospheric perspective created by the axes of the bridge. The latter, in particular, is the theme of the painting of
Waterloo Bridge, done in 1902, which is quite devoid of local colouring.
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