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Rouen Cathedral (Monet)

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Rouen Cathedral, Full Sunlight

Artist

Claude Monet

Year

1894

Type

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

107 cm 73.5 cm (42 in 28.9 in)

Location

Muse d'Orsay, Paris, France

The Rouen Cathedral series was painted in the 1890s by French impressionist Claude Monet. The paintings in the series each capture the faade of the cathedral at different times of the day and year, and reflect changes in its appearance under different lighting conditions.
Contents [hide]

1 Date 2 Painting Light 3 Technique 4 Gallery 5 References 6 External links

Date[edit]
The Rouen Cathedral paintings, more than thirty in all, were made in 1892 and 1893, then reworked in Monets studio in 1894. Monet rented spaces across the street from the cathedral, where he set up temporary studios for the purpose. In 1895, he selected what he considered to be the twenty best paintings from the series for display at his Paris dealers gallery, and of these he sold eight before the exhibition was over. Pissarro and Czanne visited the exhibition and praised the series highly. Historically, the series was well-timed. In the early 1890s, France was seeing a revival of interest in Catholicism and the subject was well received.[1] Apart from its religious significance, Rouen Cathedral built in the Gothic stylerepresented all that was best in French history and culture, being a style of architecture that was admired and adopted by many European countries during the Middle Ages.

Painting Light[edit]
When Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral series, he had long since been impressed with the way light imparts to a subject a distinctly different character at different times of the day and the year, and as atmospheric conditions change. For Monet, the effects of light on a subject became as important as the subject itself. His Series Paintings, in which he painted many views of the same subject under different lighting conditions, are an attempt to illustrate the importance of light in our perception of a subject at a given time and place.

Rouen Cathedral, West Faade, Sunlight 1892 National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C., USA

Rouen Cathedral,red, Sunlight 1892 National Museum of Serbia Belgrade, Serbia

La Cathdrale de Rouen. Le portail et la tour Saint-Romain, plein soleil ; harmonie bleue et or 1892-1893

Muse d'Orsay Paris, France

La Cathdrale de Rouen. Le portail, soleil matinal; harmonie bleue 1892-1893 Muse d'Orsay Paris, France

Robert Pelfrey, in Art and Mass Media (Kendall/Hunt, 1996), says: By focusing on the same subject through a whole series of paintings, Monet was able to concentrate on recording visual sensations themselves. The subjects did not change, but the visual sensations due to changing conditions of light changed constantly. (166) The cathedral series was not Monet's first series of paintings of a single subject, but it was his most exhaustive. The subject matter was a change, however, for prior to this series, Monet had painted mostly landscapes. The cathedral allowed him to highlight the paradox between a seemingly permanent, solid structure and the ever-changing light which constantly plays with our perception of it. There were calls for the state to buy the entire series and exhibit them as a whole, but unfortunately these calls were not heeded and the series was divided.

Technique[edit]

Rouen Cathedral, Facade (sunset), harmonie in gold and blue 1892-1894 Muse Marmottan Monet Paris, France

Painting the cathedral was a challenging task, even for Monet. Michael Howard, in his Encyclopedia of Impressionism (Carlton, 1997), writes: As always, the pictures gave him intense difficulties, which threw him into despair. He had vivid nightmares of the cathedral in various colors pink, blue and yellow falling upon him [Monet wrote:] Things dont advance very steadily, primarily because each day I discover something I hadnt seen the day before In the end, I am trying to do the impossible. (224). Monet found that the thing he had set out to paintlightwas, because of its ever-changing nature and its extreme subtlety, an almost impossible thing to capture. He was assisted, however, by his ability to capture the essence of a scene quickly, then finish it later using a sketch combined with his memory of the scene. For these paintings, he used thick layers of richly textured paint, expressive of the intricate nature of the subject. Paul Hayes Tucker, in Claude Monet: Life and Art (Yale University Press, 1995), writes: Monets sensitivity to the natural effects he observed are just one factor that make these pictures so remarkable; the way he manipulates his medium contributes to their majesty as well. For the surfaces of these canvases are literally encrusted with paint that Monet built up layer upon layer like the masonry of the faade itself. (155) The subtle interweaving of colors, the keen perception of the artist and the use of texture all serve to create a series of shimmering images in light and colormasterpieces worthy of the grandeur of their subject matter.

Gallery[edit]

The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light, 1894, J. Paul Getty Museum.

The portal and the tower of the saint-romain at morning sun, Harmony in Blue 1893 Muse d'Orsay Paris, France

Rouen Cathedral, Facade (Morning effect) 1892-1894 Folkwang Museum Essen, Germany

Rouen Cathedral, Facade 1 1892-1894 Pola Museum of Art Hakone, Japan

Rouen Cathedral, The Faade in Sunlight 1894 Clark Art Institute Williamstown, USA

Rouen Cathedral, West Facade, 1894, National Gallery of Art

Rouen Cathedral, West Facade, Sunlight, 1894,National Gallery of Art

Rouen Cathedral- Setting Sun, (Symphony in Grey and Pink), 1894, National Museum Cardiff, Great Britain

Rouen Cathedral, Facade and the Tour d'Albane. Grey Weather , 1894,Muse des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

La Cathdrale de Rouen. Le portail et la tour Saint-Romain, effet du matin ; harmonie blanche 1892-1893 Muse d'Orsay Paris, France

Rouen Cathedral, Facade and Tour d'AlbaneI, dull day 1892-1894 Beyeler Museum Riehen, Switzerland

Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal, Dull Weather 1892

Muse d'Orsay Paris, France

External video

Monet's Rouen Cathedral Series,Smarthistory[2]

Lichtenstein's Rouen Cathedral Set V, a Pop Art "reproduction",Smarthistory[3]

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Sumner, Ann (2005). Colour and Light: Fifty Impressionist and PostImpressionist Works at the National Museum of Wales. Cardiff: National Museum of Wales. p. 86. ISBN 0-7200-0551-5. 2. Jump up^ "Monet's Rouen Cathedral Series". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved February 28, 2013. 3. Jump up^ "Lichtenstein's Rouen Cathedral Set V". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved February 28, 2013.

External links[edit]
Media related to Claude Monet at Wikimedia Commons Media related to Rouen Cathedral by Monet at Wikimedia Commons

An in-depth analysis of Monet's Rouen series in theartwolf.com Brief essay on Monet's Rouen Cathedral series from the J. Paul Getty Museum
[hide]

V T E

Claude Monet

Works

List of works Women in the Garden (1866) Garden at Sainte-Adresse (1867) Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (1867) L'Enfant a la tasse (1868) The Magpie (1868)

 Painting series Movement

People

Bain la Grenouillre (1869) Impression, Sunrise (1872) Springtime (1872) Boulevard des Capucines (1873) Snow at Argenteuil (1875) Beach in Pourville(1882) The Cliff Walk at Pourville (1882) Stormy Sea in tretat (1883) Boating on the River Epte (1890) San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk (1908) Le Bassin Aux Nymphas (1919) Water Lilies (1919) Bords de la Seine Argenteuil (?) Charing Cross Bridge (18891904) Haystacks (189091) Poplar (1891) Houses of Parliament (190005) Water Lilies Impressionism Camille Doncieux (first wife) Alice Hosched (second wife) Suzanne Hosched (step-daughter) Blanche Hosched Monet (step-daughter and daughter-in law) Theodore Earl Butler (son-in law who married Monet's step-daughters, Suzanne and Marthe)

Places

Jacques-Franois Ochard (teacher) Eugne Boudin (teacher) Ernest Hosched (patron) Paul Durand-Ruel (dealer) Giverny Muse de l'Orangerie Muse d'Orsay Muse Marmottan Monet

Categories:

Paintings by Claude Monet 1890s paintings

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Techniques of the Impressionists: Broken Color

How the Impressionists introduced broken color to painting.

By Jerry Fresia
Broken color refers to a painting technique 'invented' by the Impressionists that is still used today by some artists. Technically speaking, it goes like this: suppose I have an index card that is a permanent light green color. You can see it from across the room easily enough. Yup. That is green alright. Now we take an index card that is half, say, cerulean blue, and half cadmium yellow light. I put a hole in the middle of the card and I spin it like crazy. In principle, from across the room you will see a similar green but this time the green has more energy. It is alive. It mixes optically at a distance. That is what broken color is suppose to achieve the actual sensation of light itself. But without the point of view, the technique is rather empty and vacuous. It is like the dreadful 'style' where someone who thinks they are using an Impressionist method and simple makes a lot of little dabs to create an effect, albeit a rather dead one at that. The Impact of the Impressionists It might do us well to forget the term 'Impressionism'. It was a term of approbation, as you know. The 'Impressionists' were also called the 'insurgents' and their new way of painting was called exactly what it was, 'the new painting'. Now, lets capture that moment in the mid-1870s Paris. The social edifices of the aristocracy were crumbling. There was a bottom-up, democratic thrust in art let by Manet and others, including many women and the lower classes. Remember that artists were attacking the hierarchy of the art world in Paris. It would be equivalent today if artists such as ourselves were attacking the museums, auction houses, the non-profit mechanism of directing art, local art commissions, academic thinking and the gallery system of distribution. An example of the art they opposed would be the work of Ingres whose work took months to create, with careful labored drawings, and not a hint of a brush stroke. More important, perhaps, was that painting of the artists in favor such as Ingres were the paintings of classical realism and to make heads or tails out of such work, you had to have a classical education. Everyone else was excluded, just as today much of the public is in effect excluded from the conversation about 'important' art.

What Was Different About the Art of the Impressionists Now, instead of making smooth paintings that referred to classical literature and history, the Insurgents painted the 'real' life around them from boat parties to shoes to streets to haystacks. It was personal and they wanted their personality to show hence, the unabashed use of the brush stroke. But here is the big step: the paintings no longer were pictures in which there were references to other things (forget commissions!). They were hedonistic visual treats for the artists who did the work. They tasted the world through their eyes. The new painting was all about the thrill and delight of the visual sensation, which means becoming intimately involved with the sensation of light or 'painting the light' (you can see how far a field we have come when Thomas Kinkade uses the same phrase). It is about painting directly from nature and expressing the rush of your visual (as opposed to ideational) sensation on the canvas in such a way that the activity itself is the point, not the painting!