Claude Monet exhibition: Making light of building work

But a new exhibition at the National Gallery – the first purely Monet show staged in London for more than 20 years – will focus on how he used buildings in his work.

Monet and Architecture will feature 77 paintings, almost a quarter of which come from private collections, offering a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see these architecturally-focused works in one place.

The exhibition is divided into three non-chronological parts. the Village And the Picturesque focuses on what curator Professor Richard Thomson describes as “buildings that were old, historic and perhaps a bit ramshackle”, and wonderful pastoral views.

The City And the Modern is about Monet’s fascination with the rapid growth of Paris and of resorts such as Trouville on the Normandy coast.

Finally, the monument And the mysterious chronicles later work abroad, with particular emphasis on Venice and London, and includes his studies of Rouen Cathedral.

He painted more than 30 pieces here, at different times of day and year, showing the changes under different lighting conditions. seven will be in the exhibition.

Professor Thomson, who is Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh, explains: “Previous exhibitions have only taken a slice of his career; this one takes a look at works from his entire 60-year span.

“It’s not a chronological show but one which shows how Monet used buildings for different purposes in his work. Buildings can give regular shapes in the irregularity of nature, add colour, provide screens on which light played. They can give a sense of modernity and show how the world is changing very rapidly.

“And they can have psychological importance – in the Customs officer’s House, for instance, the building is standing as a human presence where there are no figures.

”What comes across very strongly from the show is how the world changed in Monet’s 86 years, for example, the rise of what was considered “picturesque” which led to people wanting to see places with historic associations and beauty, hence the rise of tourism as a business.

This began in the 1820s after memories of departed Emperor Napoleon’s fondness for classical architecture, churches and castles drew more people to go to see the same things.

There was also a publication called Voyages Pittoresques Et Romantiques Dans L’Ancienne France, a travel guide illustrated with lithographic prints of historic sites, published between the 1820s and 1878, which gave people ideas of where to visit.

Combined with the expanding rail network, it meant that resorts developed quickly and Monet and his family (first wife Camille and baby son Jean) visited Trouville in 1870 and recorded how it had become popular in the paintings the Beach At Trouville and on the Boardwalk At Trouville, showing tourists walking along the seafront and past the new buildings, and using a marquee set up for their entertainment.

Ironically, when Monet was painting his Rouen Cathedral series in the 1890s, he complained of 600 tourists with cameras spoiling his view.

In 1888, kodak started producing a simple camera that used a lightweight lm, which meant everyone could take photographs. Monet’s Rouen series were very well received…and ironically described by a contemporary as “like a snapshot”.

When painting the facade of the cathedral, apart from his earliest works there, Monet did not sit in the square outside but took space in a room above monsieur Levy’s dress shop opposite the gothic building, and a screen was placed between him and the ladies trying on their new outfits.

The shop is now the Rouen tourist office and from there you can see the view Monet painted, sometimes working on nine or 10 canvasses in the course of the changing light of the day.

Monet’s time in London, working on views of the thames and the Houses of Parliament that he never tired of, are also well-represented in the exhibition.

Again, keeping the theme of how Monet’s art reflected ever-changing society, most of the buildings he painted in London, with the exception of Waterloo Bridge, had been built in his lifetime. He also painted the dazzling electric lights of Leicester square in 1901 (a painting which can currently be seen in Tate Britain’s Impressionists In London show).

Monet’s Impressionism – the style of painting in the open-air rather than in a studio and showing the momentary effects of light on a subject – means that his work is as much about the light as the buildings he paints.

“I want the unobtainable,” he said. “Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat and that’s the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat; the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.”

On a visit to London in 1900 and 1901, he wrote to his second wife Alice about his efforts to paint the buildings of the city with the changing effects of light he desired.

“I’m going strong now, although it’s very difficult, for no one day is anything like another. Yesterday there was sun, with an exquisite mist and a splendid sunset; today, rain and fog, to the point where I am writing to you by (electric) light at four in the afternoon, whereas yesterday I was able to work in daylight until almost six o’clock.”

He’d panic when the weather wasn’t changeable enough. “When I got up, I was terrified to see there was no fog, not even a wisp of mist: I was prostrate, and could see all my paintings done for. But gradually the res were lit and the smoke and haze came back.”

The London smog proved picturesque. Monet wrote to Alice that he had up to 65 canvasses on the go and by 9am on the morning of February 3, 1901, had already been toiling on four separate works.

“There’s no more extraordinary country for a painter,” he said at the end of the letter.

However, as well as grand buildings, there are also less well-known structures in the National Gallery exhibition.

Monet and Camille moved to the village of Vétheuil in 1878, and he was immediately attracted to painting the 13th-century church, featuring it many times and making it one of the most recognisable buildings in his work.

There is a sadness to these images, too.

Camille died in the house in Vétheuil and her husband painted her on her death bed.

She is buried in a little cemetery close to the church her husband found so inspiring.

The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Monet And Architecture is at the National Gallery from April 9-July 29. More details at nationalgallery.org.uk/ 020 7747 2885