Claude Monet Cathedral. Rouen Cathedrals by Claude Monet

Rouen Cathedral by Claude Monet

Era, style, direction - impressionism

The cathedral in Rouen, the ancient capital of the Roman province in northern Gaul, built on the very spot where we see it now, is the first religious Christian building. Its construction was resumed at the beginning of the second millennium AD, but after a fire in 1200 the cathedral required thirty years of reconstruction, as a result of which it was restored in the “flaming” Gothic style. The main facade was rebuilt over several centuries. For four hundred years the building was rebuilt and strengthened, the stylistic unity was broken, nevertheless the cathedral looked very picturesque, Monet was simply fascinated by it.

Monet's largest cycle of works is dedicated to the Rouen Cathedral, or more precisely, to its western facade, decorated with sculpture reflecting the development trends of French Gothic; The façade is flanked by two large towers - the Saint-Roman Tower to the north and the Butter Tower to the south. The name of the latter is due to the fact that funds received from grateful citizens who were allowed to eat butter during Lent were invested in its construction.

Monet arrived in Rouen, a city located in northern France, on February 5, 1892, and rented a room at the Angletaire Hotel on Avenue Boieldieu. He painted his first view of the cathedral's façade from a hotel window. Then the artist went to Paris for some time. Upon his return, he obtained permission to work, sitting in the window of the Fernand Levy fashion store, overlooking the cathedral square.

The series dedicated to the Rouen Cathedral consists of fifty paintings executed in the same format. This cycle occupies an important place in Monet’s work; the artist worked on it systematically, with special care, as never before. Every half hour he tried to capture the fleeting states of the light-air environment and convey subtle halftones of color. On April 3, Monet wrote to Alice Hoscheda: “Every day I discover something new, something I have not seen before.” The store owner, who noticed that female visitors were reacting strangely to the artist’s presence, asked him to henceforth hide behind a screen and limit his activities to the morning hours. On February 15 of the following year, Monet returned to Rouen, staying at the same hotel and staying there until March 15. He deliberately chose the same period as last year, wanting to work under the same lighting, but nevertheless was forced to slightly change the angle of view, moving to the building of the Eduard Moki plant on Bolshoi Most Street. The new viewing location was located in close proximity to the hotel, from the windows of which Monet first captured the view of the cathedral. The rooms reserved for workshops were located on the second floor, from their windows overlooking the cathedral square, Monet had a magnificent view of the cathedral. The artist chose a high point of view, allowing him to capture the object as much as possible, from which he could not move a great distance. The majestic appearance of the facade, occupying the entire space of the canvas, made a stunning impression on the viewer with its power.

Monet immortalized the appearance of the cathedral, which became a symbol of France, without attaching much importance to its architectural features, being interested, first of all, in the color reflections on the stone at different angles of refraction of the sun's rays. The building completely dissolves in the light-air environment characteristic of a certain time of day: at dawn it is shrouded in moist air vapor, at sunset it is illuminated by warm pink rays, the fluctuations of the bright midday light give it power. In windy weather, the surface of the stone appears pockmarked, and on sunny days it appears dark gray.

While working on the series, the artist was in an anxious, confused state of mind; Dissatisfied with himself, he destroyed many of the paintings from this cycle. In the same letter to Alice Osheda, he wrote: “At night I was overcome by nightmares, the cathedral seemed to collapse on me, knocking me off my feet. It was sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes yellow.”

In the Rouen Cathedral series, the main structural element is light, which ignites the colors and reflects off the stone surface, imitating the shape of objects and giving depth to the three-dimensional image. The artist no longer uses neutral tones to convey shadows; there are no clearly defined areas on the canvas with a predominance of dark or light. The shadows are painted in bright colors. Atmospheric effects are transferred to the canvas, it seems that time has frozen for a moment. Light seems to reveal the immaterial nature of objects, nature finds its harmony in light and eternal movement: every moment its appearance is transformed.

Monet began to work early in the morning, without waiting for seven o'clock, with backlight, as the sun rose behind the cathedral, and its rays fell on the building from behind, barely highlighting the contours of the towers and spiers. At noon, when the sun was at its zenith, the entire building was illuminated by dazzling sunlight, leaving only the portals obscured by the façade in the shadows. In the afternoon, towards evening, the shadows of nearby houses painted the facade in various shades of blue. This is how Georges Clemenceau, an art critic and close friend of Monet, who often visited his house in Giverny and a true admirer of his talent, described his impressions of the series of “cathedrals”: “At first, the gray series is a huge gray mass, which gradually brightens more and more; then a white series, imperceptibly moving from a faint flicker to an ever-increasing play of light, culminating in the flashes of a rainbow series; and then the blue series, where the light softens again into blue, melting like a bright heavenly vision.” For the sake of liberating visual perception, Monet even sacrificed perspective - an immutable principle of European fine art since the 15th century. His painting style shows the influence of Japanese prints, which became widespread in France in the 1860s.

Repeating the motif dozens of times, transforming in the rays of light at different times of the day, Monet changed the generally accepted idea of the painting as a complete, self-sufficient work. The same Clemenceau wrote: “The artist consciously creates 20 paintings for one motif, as if wanting to convince us that it is possible and even necessary to create dozens, hundreds and even thousands of works, reflecting every moment of life, every heartbeat. The naked eye can see that the appearance of the cathedral is constantly transformed in the rays of light. Even the attentive eye of an outside observer is able to catch these changes and notice subtle fluctuations. What can we say about the painter, whose eye is much more perfect. Monet, being an artist ahead of his time, teaches us to perceive visual images and see the world more subtly."

The series of “cathedrals” was completed on April 14, 1893; at the final stage, Monet worked in his home studio. On May 10, 1895, twenty paintings from this cycle were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris and were a huge success.

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://artclassic.edu.ru/

Era, style, direction - impressionism

- (Monet) (1840 1926), French painter. Representative of impressionism. Subtle in color, landscapes filled with light and air; in the 1890s sought to capture the fleeting states of the light-air environment at different times of the day (the “Haystacks” series... encyclopedic Dictionary

- (monet) Claude Oscar (1840, Paris - 1926, Giverny, France), French artist, representative of impressionism. Born into a grocer's family. When Monet was six years old, his family moved to Le Havre, where the future artist met E.... ... Art encyclopedia

MONET, CLAUDE OSCAR (Monet, Claude Oscar) (1840 1926), French artist, one of the founders of impressionism. Born on November 14, 1840 in Paris in the family of a grocer. Five years later his family moved to Le Havre. Around 1856 under the leadership of Louis Eugene... ... Collier's Encyclopedia

- (Monet) (1840 1926), French painter. One of the main creators of the impressionist method. He studied with E. Boudin, attended the Suisse Academy (185 60) and the workshop of C. Gleyre (1862 63) in Paris. He was influenced by C. Corot, G. Courbet, E. Manet.... ... Art encyclopedia

Monet Claude Oscar (14.2.1840, Paris, 6.12.1926, Giverny, Normandy), French landscape painter, one of the founders of impressionism. He studied with E. Boudin in Le Havre (1858-59), at the Suisse Academy (1859-60) and in the workshop of C. Gleyre (1862-63) in... ...

- (1840 1926) French painter. Representative of impressionism. Subtle in color, landscapes filled with light and air; in the 1890s sought to capture the fleeting states of the light-air environment at different times of the day (Haystacks series, 1890 91 ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Monet- Claude (Monet, Claude) 1840, Paris 1928, Giverny. French painter, founder of impressionism. Monet's artistic talent manifested itself early: while still studying at college in Le Havre, he became famous for his caricatures. In 1858 he met with... ... European art: Painting. Sculpture. Graphics: Encyclopedia

Not to be confused with Edouard Manet. Claude Monet Oscar Claude Monet ... Wikipedia

- (Monet) Claude Oscar (14.2.1840, Paris, 6.12.1926, Giverny, Normandy), French landscape painter, one of the founders of Impressionism. He studied with E. Boudin in Le Havre (1858-59), at the Suisse Academy (1859-60) and in the workshop of C. Gleyre (1862-63) ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Books

Claude Monet Late Works, Astakhov Yu.. The book is dedicated to the late works of the French painter, founder of impressionism, Claude Mo ie. Working in the open air, he, like other impressionists, saw the transformation of nature,...
Claude Monet. A collection of poster paintings with reproductions of world masterpieces of painting. This publication is dedicated to the work of the famous French impressionist artist, who revolutionized the idea of art - Oscar Claude Monet. He made a real revolution in the world...

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name “Rouen Cathedral”? Many people think that this is a majestic architectural treasure, but it is also a series of paintings by the famous artist Claude Monet.

A little about the history of Rouen Cathedral itself. Construction began in 1145 and ended in 1506. For a long time (from 1876 to 1880) it was the tallest building in the world, 151 meters long. The cathedral suffered the most during World War II; it was hit by 7 bombs. Now it is the hallmark of Rouen and a favorite place of inspiration for all artists.

First opinion

Monet first visited Rouen in 1892 and was delighted with the pomp and decoration of the cathedral. Then he began to paint the first paintings from the cycle, and there are about 30 of them in total. The idea was to show every vibration of light, the reflection of the day on the facade, the influence of weather conditions on the details. He brought the temple into the history of modern impressionist art. Playing with objects, the maestro created a lot of new images. Admired, he borrowed the play of the sun's rays and captured every detail, be it pale walls under the influence of a foggy gray haze, golden-amber facades at the peak of the midday heat or the multifaceted glow of stained glass windows.

But different views on the same subject at different moments and in different light were nothing new to him. Indeed, in 1891, he had already created a similar series of 15 paintings, where he depicted a haystack lying on the outskirts of the city of Giverny. And here he showed restraint by showing the hay under the summer sun, in winter and spring, at sunrise and sunset.
Many people ask the question: “Why this particular plot?” But the idea that Gothic architecture was very interesting and fascinating to the artist is incorrect. After all, for Monet, a simple stone and a haystack and a cathedral had the same weight in terms of artistic heritage.

“Imagine a room on the walls of which paintings are hung in a sequence that reproduces the changes in objects depending on changes in light: first a gray series - a huge dark mass that gradually becomes lighter and lighter, then a white series, imperceptibly moving from a faint flicker to an ever-increasing play of light, culminating in the flashes of the rainbow series, and then the blue series, where the light softens again into blue, melting like a bright heavenly vision. The colors are permeated with black, gray, white, blue, red light - all its shades. According to how These twenty paintings are hung, they seem to us like twenty discoveries, but I am afraid that the close connection that unites them will elude the viewer if he does not pay enough attention to them.” Thus, in the article “The Revolution of the Cathedrals”, the future Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau described the exhibition at which Claude Monet presented to the public a series of paintings “Rouen Cathedral”.

Rouen Cathedral. Postcard from 1881
This is the view from Monet's studio

Rouen Cathedral
Modern photo from Wikipedia, as during my trips to Rouen in 2012 and 2015
The facade was restored and was partially closed (.

Monet spent many years preparing for this exhibition, which took place in May 1895 at the Parisian gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel. Creating series of paintings that are interconnected and complementary to one another has occupied the artist for a long time. In the cycles "Gare Saint-Lazare" (1877), "Haystacks" (1890 - 1891), "Poplars" (1891), Monet repeatedly depicted similar subjects in different lighting and weather conditions, moving more and more decisively from a single landscape or a group of thematically similar ones landscapes to a series united by a common concept. However, if in his first series Monet still paid tribute to tradition, changing the point of view and composition, then in the series “Rouen Cathedral” he proposed a truly revolutionary solution: all the paintings depict, with very minor variations, the same thing - a fragment of the western facade of the famous Gothic cathedral in Rouen.

Fragment of the western facade of Rouen Cathedral

Why did Monet choose this subject? Other critics try to justify the artist’s choice by interest in Gothic architecture, which arose in France at the end of the century on the wave of national revival, but this explanation can hardly be accepted. The greatness of the Gothic style was not reflected in Monet’s paintings: for him, an architectural masterpiece and a haystack were equally interesting. Light stone, the play of light and shadow, carved lace - all this became for the artist an ideal “screen” on which the changes occurring in nature day after day, from dawn to dusk, were reflected.

Left: house on Cathedral Square (former Levi's store, now a tourist office),
in which Monet rented one of his Rouen workshops

Work on "Cathedrals" took more than two years. The first two paintings, which date back to the beginning of February 1892, stand apart in the series - judging by the angle, the artist painted them on the square, located to the north-west of the cathedral. Monet worked on the following canvases, created from February to April of the same year, in a specially rented apartment opposite the cathedral, converted into a workshop. From a window on the second floor, the artist watched the façade of the cathedral day after day, working simultaneously on several canvases. He took the unfinished canvases home to Giverny and continued to improve them from memory, and in 1893 he repeated everything all over again - he arrived in Rouen in February, rented an apartment, now in another house, and until April he painted the cathedral from the window. The last six works were created in the third apartment, into which the artist moved for purely domestic reasons. This explains the minor compositional differences between the canvases of the series and once again proves the randomness of the composition of the paintings. The series was finally completed only in 1894 in Giverny.

Third from the left is the window of Monet's studio

The work, as grandiose as the Rouen Cathedral itself, exhausted Monet. He rewrote canvases many times, destroyed them in frustration, and started again (which explains the conflicting information about the total number of paintings, from 28 to 40, including sketches). His letters from Rouen to his wife and friends are full of complaints and doubts: “I’m broken, I can’t take it anymore /…/ My nights are full of nightmares: the cathedral is falling on my head, it seems blue, then pink, then yellow.” “I work so hard that I’m close to a stroke from fatigue.” "I can't think of anything but the cathedral." "I am completely confused and dissatisfied with what I did here. I aimed too high, but it seems I overdid it, ruining what was good. For four days now I have not been able to work and decided to quit everything and return home. I won’t even pack up my canvases - I don’t want to see them, at least for a while." Not a single series, either before or after, was given to him with such strain: after all, in “Cathedrals” Claude Monet introduced painting, which usually dealt only with three dimensions of space , the fourth dimension is time.

Rouen Cathedral. Symphony of blue and pink

There is a legend (supposedly, this is the memory of Monet himself) about how the very idea of the series arose. Once the artist was painting en plein air, but the lighting had changed so much that he could not continue the canvas he had started. Monet asked to bring a new canvas from home, but soon the lighting changed again, and he was forced to start working on another canvas, and so on, until the series was completed.

Facade of Rouen Cathedral

Of course, Monet's interest in the series had various reasons - in particular, we must not forget about his passion for Japanese art and the famous graphic series of Hokusai. Nevertheless, this anecdote accurately reflects the contradiction that Impressionism inevitably encountered in its logical development, and which Monet sought to resolve in the series. The feeling of constant variability of the world, the uniqueness of every moment, characteristic of the impressionists, led to the idea that a static object of painting, independent of the surrounding light-air environment, does not exist at all. And if the artist’s task is to capture a series of light effects, then this is possible not in a single canvas, but in a series. A series of paintings takes on a dramaturgy suggested to the artist by nature itself; the plot chosen by the author dynamically changes and develops over time. That is why it was so important for Monet to arrange the works in a strict sequence: only with such a presentation of the moments captured on each of the canvases was a temporal extension formed.

West façade at noon

At the same time, the motif itself, repeated from picture to picture, is no longer as important as its metamorphoses. The central “character” of the series is not the cathedral, but the light: changing before our eyes, the pearlescent-iridescent walls dematerialize, dissolving, like a mirage, in a light-air environment. “The older I get, the more I realize that I must work to reproduce what I am looking for: the instantaneous effect of atmosphere on things and the light diffused throughout everything,” wrote Claude Monet in 1891. He did not like to theorize (“I always hated those terrible theories”) and expressed his creative aspirations in three words: “I seek the impossible.” In this search for the impossible, in the painful pursuit of the moment, Monet spent the years devoted to the “Rouen Cathedral” series, which, according to critics, became the quintessence of impressionism.

Evening. Harmony in brown

When Monet finally considered the series complete and presented it to the public, the times of misunderstanding and ridicule of the Impressionists had already passed. Monet's works - including those from the series preceding the Cathedrals - sold well, and even before the opening of the exhibition, eight Cathedrals were sold. The twenty paintings in the series included in the exhibition were received favorably by fellow artists and critics, although Monet was reproached for being too enthusiastic about technical techniques, and his canvases were compared to “the view through a curtain.”

Rouen Cathedral in the evening

However, Monet’s desire, who saw the series as a single work, not to separate the paintings, did not come true - there was no buyer ready to purchase all twenty canvases, each of which was valued at 15,000 francs. Against the will of the author, “Cathedrals” were sold to various buyers, and today paintings from the series adorn museum and private collections in many countries. Only a hundred years after the end of the series, in May 1994, seventeen “Cathedrals” met briefly in Rouen, at an exhibition in the city's Museum of Fine Arts. But the disparate series “Rouen Cathedral” became one of the most notable artistic phenomena of the late 19th century, ahead of its time and connecting two centuries. "Oh, those cathedrals of his!" - the heroine exclaims enthusiastically
Marcel Proust's novel Sodom and Gomorrah (1921).

West façade and Saint-Romain Tower

Monet, the last of the Impressionists, is called the harbinger of abstract art. “Forget about what you see in front of you, be it a tree, a house or a field, just tell yourself: here is a small blue square, here is a pink rectangle, here is a yellow stripe, and draw not objects, but their color components,” these words Monet is perceived as a parting word not only to the artist’s contemporaries, but also to future abstractionists.

Claude Monet. Water lilies. Fragment. 1917-1920

It is symbolic that in the same 1895, when “Cathedrals” was exhibited at Durand-Ruel, an exhibition of impressionists was held in Moscow, at which thirty-year-old Wassily Kandinsky saw Monet’s painting “Haystacks,” which became the first step on his path to abstractionism. “...Deep down in the consciousness, the subject was discredited as a necessary element of the picture,” Kandinsky conveyed his impression of “Stacks” in the book “Steps” (1913). Kandinsky’s words echo the discussion about Monet’s “Cathedrals” by another pioneer of non-figurative art, Kazimir Malevich: “It is not a cathedral that is needed, but painting, and where and from what it is taken is not important to us, just as it does not matter from which shell the pearls are chosen” (“ On new systems in art", 1919).

Painting by Jackson Pollock

The later work of Monet is usually associated with abstractionism, and above all, works from the grandiose series “Water Lilies”: individual fragments of these works could, it seems, be painted by a representative of abstract expressionism - Jackson Pollock or Andre Masson. But in this sense, “Cathedrals” cannot be underestimated. After all, it was in “Cathedrals” that the artist most consistently declared the secondary nature of the object in relation to the actual pictorial effects. Even the names of individual works in the “Cathedrals” series bring us closer to non-objective art: “Brown Harmony”, “Harmony of Blue and Gold”, “Symphony of Gray and Pink”.

Roy Lichtenstein. Rouen Cathedral. 1969

Monet, who introduced the very concept of series into fine art, inspired one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Roy Lichtenstein, a representative of the opposite direction to abstractionism - pop art. Lichtenstein paid tribute to Monet in his own version of the Rouen Cathedral series (1969). By overlaying three of Monet's works with his signature typographic screen and thereby placing them in the context of popular culture, he emphasized the enduring greatness of Monet's painting.

Photo: http://www.tendanceouest.com/print.php?id=77008

And finally, Monet’s work on the “Rouen Cathedral” series itself is reminiscent of a modern performance: imagine how, day after day, month after month, he sits by the window in front of several easels and, hiding from the gaze of street onlookers, paints a cathedral, a cathedral, a cathedral... The master would probably have liked what can be seen today from this historical window: annual laser shows fabulously transform the walls of the ancient Rouen Cathedral, and along the façade that Monet immortalized, his paintings float - haystacks, water lilies in a pond, fields of red poppies, sea rocks, lady with an umbrella, garden in Giverny...

Laser show "Paintings by Monet" on the facade of Rouen Cathedral. 2014
photo: http://www.tendanceouest.com/print.php?id=77008

It seems that Monet would have approved of the action that took place in front of the Rouen town hall in June 2010: here, on an area of six hundred square meters, 1,250 people gathered, and each of them held in their hands an enlarged fragment of a painting from the “Rouen Cathedral” series. The "living picture" was photographed and filmed from a helicopter to provide evidence for the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rouen, action "Rouen Cathedral", 2010