Monet Magic

The Courtauld Gallery exhibition Monet and London: Views of the Thames brings together a group of paintings that were first exhibited in Paris 120 years ago. Monet painted his Thames series during visits to London in 1899, 1900 and 1901, while staying at the Savoy Hotel, from where he could look out on the river and surrounding architecture, shrouded in the notorious London fog. Monet visited during the winter, when the fog produced by the city’s heavy industry was at its most intense. Fascinated by the fog’s atmospheric effects, Monet protrayed Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament emerging from the gloom with mysterious lights and strange colours. He returned to his studio in Giverny to complete the paintings, and the result was a series of almost a hundred views of the Thames. For the Paris exhibition of 1904, Monet selected a group of 37 paintings that he considered as the finest representatives of his most ambitious artistic project. The exhibition at the Courtauld features 18 works from the Paris show and it succeeds in recreating Monet’s original intention to create a sensational experience for his audience viewing the series as a whole.