Rouen Cathedral (Monet)

Rouen Cathedral , the portal and the Staint-Romain tower in the bright sun, harmony in blue and gold, 1893 ( Musée d'Orsay , Paris)

The Rouen Cathedral is a series of 33 paintings by Claude Monet , created between 1892 and 1894 . It shows the cathedral of Rouen in different light situations and partly with slight variations of the point of view. The pictures are among the highlights of Monet's work.

Image description

The 33 images all show the Cathedral of Rouen in one image-filling view. 28 of the pictures show the west facade, five other small sections of the cathedral. The Gothic facade is shown in an extreme close-up view, but not in a realistic and detailed reproduction of the architecture . Instead, the essential elements of the picture are the colored light and the reproduction of the effect of the building in different lighting conditions, the times of day and the weather conditions.

Claude Monet painted the first two pictures of the west facade series from a direct frontal view. The point of view moved further to the right over time, as Monet's point of view changed twice. There are a total of three different perspectives from which the pictures were created. The five other paintings show the Cour d'Albane (northwest side of the cathedral) and other sides.

History of origin

The idea for a series of pictures arose as early as the 1880s. The two variants of the same motif from different perspectives Woman with a parasol from 1886 show the approach of a concept. In 1890 and 1891 the series on the haystacks and the poplars were created , in which the same motif was captured in the different lighting conditions of the different seasons. Claude Monet painted the pictures in the Rouen Cathedral series in 1892/1893 with interruptions in Rouen and completed them in Giverny in 1894 . That is why most of the signatures also have the year 1894.

He found the motif during a trip in 1892 and immediately began to paint from an empty apartment. However, he could not complete the picture because he urgently needed to return to Giverny. When he returned to Rouen, the apartment was no longer accessible and he had to choose a new location. Monet had the motif printed on the canvases as a preliminary drawing for the series. However, painting gave him problems. So he has nightmares and even destroyed some canvases. He returned to Giverny in mid-April to recover from the exertion. He had doubts about the quality of his paintings of the cathedral. The next year Monet returned to Rouen to revisit the motif. After finishing his work in Rouen, he finished the pictures in February 1894 in his studio in Giverny.

rating

Kasimir Severinovich Malevich said of Monet's Cathedral in Rouen : “[This is] painting in the true sense, movement and the endless growth of colored spots, nobody has seen that before. When Monet painted the cathedral, he had in mind the reproduction of light and shadow on the walls of the cathedral, but in reality he concentrated entirely on the development of a painting that grows on the walls of a cathedral. His central goal was not light and shadow [...] It's not about the cathedral, but about painting. ”Monet himself described his way of working with the focus on the atmosphere and the undefined rendering of the architecture with the words:“ I want to reflect what I feel in front of the subject. "

Provenance

Claude Monet withheld the pictures of the cathedral for a long time before reluctantly showing them to the art dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Bernheim . He was aware of the artistic value of his work and initially set the price at 15,000 francs. There was a conflict with Durand-Ruel about the price, which he considered too high. As a result of the dispute, Monet lowered his expectation to 12,000 francs and the sales exhibition was postponed further. This took place with 20 of the cathedral pictures in May 1895 at Durand-Ruel and was successful for Monet.

Images from this series are now in various museums and collections around the world.

List of pictures

image	title	Exhibition / collection / owner
	Rouen Cathedral; The portal in the morning sun, harmony in blue	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Rouen Cathedral; The portal and the Staint-Romain tower in the bright sun, harmony in blue and gold	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Rouen Cathedral; The portal in the sunlight	Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown
	Rouen Cathedral; The portal and the Alban tower, morning mood	Beyeler Foundation in Riehen
	Rouen Cathedral in the morning mist	Folkwang Museum in Essen
	Rouen Cathedral in the morning light	J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles
	Rouen Cathedral in the morning light	Weimar Castle Museum in Weimar
	Le Portail (Soleil)	Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
	La Cathédrale de Rouen, Le Portail au Soleil	National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
	Rouen Cathedral, facade	Pola Museum of Art in Hakone
	Rouen Cathedral, sunset	Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris
	La Cathédrale de Rouen. Le Portail et la tour d'Albane. Temps gris	Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen in Rouen
	La Cathédrale de Rouen. Le portail et la tour Saint-Romain, effet du matin; harmony blanche	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	La Cathédrale de Rouen. Le portail, soleil matinal; harmony bleue	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	La Cathédrale de Rouen, Le Portail vu de face, harmonie brune	Musée d'Orsay in Paris
	Rouen Cathedral, red, Sunlight	Serbian National Museum in Belgrade
	Rouen Cathedral - sunset, symphony in gray and pink	National Museum Cardiff

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Karin Sagner: Claude Monet . DuMont Literature and Art Verlag, Cologne 2005. Page 104.
2. ↑ Cathedral Series by Monet (French)
3. ↑ [The 28 west facade paintings by Monet (French)]
4. ^ Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication: Musée d'Orsay . Editions de la Réunion dees museées nationeaux, Paris 1987, p. 136
5. ^ Daniel Wildenstein: Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Taschen, Cologne 2003. Page 284.

literature

• Karin Sagner: Claude Monet . DuMont Literature and Art Verlag, Cologne 2005. ISBN 3-8321-7598-9
• Daniel Wildenstein: Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Taschen, Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-8228-1689-2
• Christoph Heinrich: Monet . Taschen, Cologne 2006. ISBN 3-8228-6368-8

Web links

Commons : Rouen Cathedral by Monet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Rouen Cathedral on ibiblio.org