The Gallery is most famous for its iconic Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces – such as Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. It showcases these alongside an internationally renowned collection of works from the Renaissance through to the present day.
The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) © The Courtauld
For the first time in 120 years, The Courtauld Gallery reunites an extraordinary group of Claude Monet’s Impressionist paintings of London in the major exhibition The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, running from 27 September 2024 to 19 January 2025.
Monet and London.Views of the Thames,The Courtauld Gallery.©FergusCarmichael
These ravishing works have never been the subject of a UK exhibition. Begun during three visits to the capital between 1899 and 1901, the paintings depict Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. The series was unveiled in Paris in 1904 to great critical acclaim. Monet fervently wanted to show it in London the following year but the project fell through. The Courtauld Gallery will therefore realise Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of exhibiting this distinct group of works in London, just 300 metres from the Savoy Hotel where many of them were painted.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) is world renowned as the leading figure of French Impressionism, a movement that changed the course of modern art.
Less known is the fact that some of his most remarkable paintings were made not in France but in London. They depict views of the Thames, capturing the river and its surrounding architecture as they had never been seen before, full of evocative atmosphere, mysterious light, and radiant colour.
ClaudeMonet (1840-1926), Waterloo Bridge,Overcast,1903, oil on canvas, Ordrupgaard,Denmark. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Monet came to London in the wintertime, fascinated by the effects of the London fog, a phenomenon produced by the city’s heavy industrialisation in the 19th century.
In London, the fog took on a particular density and a variety of hues that occurred nowhere else. Monet’s paintings are undoubtedly amongst the most significant representations of the Thames ever made and embody the complexity of his practice, 40 years after his debut, as he pushed the Impressionist approach to the extreme.
Claude Monet (1840-1926),Houses of Parliament, Sunset,1903, oil on canvas, 81.2x92cm. Hasso Plattner Collection
Monet started the paintings during his three long stays in London in 1899, 1900 and 1901 and finished them in his studio in Giverny, north of Paris. While he eventually painted almost 100 views of the Thames, his most ambitious project to date, the exhibition focuses on the smaller group of 37 paintings that were presented at the unveiling of the series in 1904.
Monet completed these works as a unit specifically for their public display and he considered them the finest representatives of his artistic project. They constituted, in his eyes, the true ‘Thames series’. After the show, the paintings were dispersed, purchased by collectors in France and abroad.
The exhibition features 21 paintings, 18 of which were in the 1904 unveiling, in an unprecedented effort to recreate the display that Monet himself put together and the experience he wanted his audience to have seeing these extraordinary works.
The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
The Courtauld Gallery - Somerset House, Strand London WC2R 0RN
from 27 September 2024 to 19 January 2025.
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