1899 -1904 · Thames, fog and dissolved architecture

In London, Monet made Parliament, Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge three screens where fog, smoke, sun and reflections recompose the city.

Claude Monet discovered London during the war of 1870, but his great series were born during three stays between the fall of 1899 and the spring of 1901. Installed at the Savoy Hotel, he dominates the Thames and works in the morning on Waterloo Bridge then Charing Cross Bridge. At the end of the day, he crosses the river to observe Parliament from Saint Thomas' Hospital. This program regulates the day without ever stabilizing the pattern. Fog, industrial smoke, sun and tide change so quickly that Monet works simultaneously on many canvases. He begins a painting for each effect, replaces it when the light transforms and later takes a similar version. Waterloo Bridge, a subject most often repeated, sometimes reduced to a few arches floating between water and sky. Charing Cross Bridge introduces locomotives, steam and modern traffic. Parliament becomes a dark silhouette whose towers emerge facing at red, purple or orange sunsets. Monet brought back around eighty paintings to Giverny and reworked them for a long time in the workshop. The dates given to certain works therefore often correspond to their completion instead than at their early London. Presented by Durand-Ruel in 1904, the series manifests a mature method: architecture is no longer valid as a document, but as a repeated measure of the atmosphere. London becomes less a city than a field of colored light where water, stone, steam and sky share the same pictorial material. The "Claude Monet Londres" selection notably compares The Parliament of London and The Parliament of London, setting sun. His reading favor figures.

In the London fog, Monet does not lose his motive: he discovers that the city can be built by color alone.