Клод Моне - Руанский собор, западный вход, солнечнфй свет 1894
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Руанский собор, западный вход, солнечнфй свет 1894
100x65см холст/масло
National Gallery of Art, Washingon, DC, USA
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From the National Gallery of Art, Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC. :
Toward the middle of the 1880s, a number of artists became disaffected with impressionism. Monet began to explore painting in a series, or creating groups of works of almost identical subjects. The series paintings were a break from impressionism in two critical respects: the works, based on campaigns in front of the motif, were usually extensively reworked in the studio and lacked the spontaneity integral to impressionism; and, the motif itself was secondary to effects of light and weather.
The new qualities of Monet's series paintings were given concentrated expression in the Rouen Cathedral paintings, in which the stone facade fills the canvases. Monet showed 20 of the 30 extant Cathedral works, among them this one, as a group in an 1895 exhibition. Individual paintings, named according to the view and weather conditions depicted, are chiefly distinguished by color, which assumes the principal role in the series. The cumulative impression reported by visitors extended beyond the impact of individual works. The rich surfaces of the paintings seem to imitate the textural fabric of the cathedral's carved stone. Individually the paintings depict a religious edifice, but collectively the series becomes a denial of the solidity of Rouen Cathedral as an entity, and gives precedence to artistic concerns of light, color, and mood.