Monet Reproduction of
Rouen Cathedral

Rouen Cathedral (Morning Sun)

Oil in canvas, 1894

You can now own a Monet reproduction of Rouen Cathedral hand-painted at museum quality oil painting guaranteed for one year.

This canvas shows the main facade of Rouen Cathedral and the Tour d'Albane in full sunlight. Monet had never before laboured so greatly, or become so depressed, as he did on these two expeditions to Rouen, to paint the cathedral. His letters are full of references to his low spirits and fatigue.

"I am broken, I can do no more... I have had a night filled with nightmares: the cathedral was falling down on top of me...", he wrote to Alice Hoschede on 3 April 1892. And again to Durand-Ruel, ten days later: "I am utterly dejected and dissatisfied with what I have done, I have aimed too high and only succeeded in spoiling what was good".

There is the same tone of impotence and dispair in the letters he wrote in 1893 at the time of his second visit. Again he felt he was being too ambitious. As in his previous series, the haystacks and the poplars, he was trying to capture the evanescence of appearences, but the old grey stone seemed to be chaning before his eyes. So he would work over what he had done, building up the impasto, giving the canvas an almost abstract character and a grainy texture.

Over the thirty paintings the presentation of the facade varies, sometimes viewed frontally, sometimes at a slight angle. This depended on Monet's vantage point, which was either above a lingerie shop or on the first floor of a dress shop. One can only imagine what the customers must have felt as they came for a fitting and saw this bearded gentleman, pipe in mouth, painting away by an open window in the depths of winter. Monet was oblivous to all the distractions , all his energies were bent on observing the play of light on the ancient stone. The work exhasted him, and in April 1893 he simply called a halt, returned to Giverny and went to bed for three days.

It was not until May 1895, after the pictures had been finished in the studio, that the 'cathedrals' were exhibited by Durand-Ruel. Pissarro, Degas, Renoir and Cezanne were all dumbfounded, as too was the art critic Georges Clemenceau, who wrote in La Justice: "Monet's eye is our precursor, it sees beyond us and guides us in a visual education which renders our perception of the universe more penetrating and sensitive... The true wonder of Monet is that he sees how the very stones vibrate, and shows them to us, vibrant".

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Rouen Cathedral (Morning Sun)
By Monet

Impressionist Art Gallery
Oil Painting Reproductions of Impressionist Masterpieces

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