À propos de l’œuvre
Pont de Charing, par Claude Monet
Claude Monet · 1903 · Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon · W1524
Charing Cross Bridge, Lyon W1524hand painted reproduction
Charing Cross Bridge crosses a silver-pink Thames almost in the middle of the painting. On the right, the towers of Parliament emerge like two blue shadows; in the center, a small boat breaks the flicker of the water. The mist connects the sky, architecture and reflections in an extremely pale range where every slight difference in color becomes significant.
Look at the work
The bridge and the Parliament appear as two different degrees in the same pink mist
The sky occupies the upper half and mixes powder pink, pearl gray, lavender and a few yellows. The towers of Westminster stand on the right without a firm outline. Near the bridge, whiter smoke signals the passage of trains and suggests the bank behind them.
The blue-green apron divides the canvas into two strips. Beneath it, the piles descend into water covered with small touches of cream and pink. A slightly off-center dark boat provides the only figurative accent in the foreground, while a blue-purple bank closes the lower right corner.
The composition is due to tiny gaps: a slightly colder blue is enough to make a tower, a pile or a boat emerge from the fog.
Composition, touch and light
What Monet builds behind the impression of snapshot
Three precise elements allow us to understand this composition and the essential difficulties of faithful reproduction.
A Parliament reduced to two verticals
The towers should not become too dark. They are painted transparent blue gray and remain surrounded by pink, like an image perceived through several layers of humid air.
A horizontal bridge almost without drawing
The apron is a slightly irregular blue-green stripe. The piles are short and extend immediately into the water, where their reflections mingle with the clear flickers.
A Thames made of fragmented light
The white, cream, pink and mauve touches are small but not regular. Their density increases under the deck and around the boat, which builds depth without a precise shoreline.
Details and visual documents
Observe the material and the exact version
The additional images show the difficult-to-read passages in the full view and, where it exists, the actual appearance of the work at the museum.
The entire view available and controlled measures 1013 × 813 px. The details of 600 × 600 px and 620 × 560 px remain at their native definition, without enlargement. The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon also offers a gigapixel reader to examine the work; the three media in the file are real decodable WebPs.
Documented benchmarks
Three pieces of information specific to this work
These facts concern this precise version and are verified from the notice of the institution which keeps it.
Lyon B 1725, Wildenstein 1524
The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon titles the work Charing Cross Bridge, the Thames and the date 1903. This oil on canvas measures 73.4 × 100.3 cm and corresponds to number 1524 of the Wildenstein catalog.
The Raymond Koechlin legacy of 1933
The work joined the Lyon collections thanks to the legacy of Raymond Koechlin in 1933. It bears the inventory number B 1725 and constitutes one of the museum's major impressionist paintings.
Studies resumed in Giverny before the 1904 exhibition
Monet observed Charing Cross Bridge from the Savoy Hotel during his stays in London. He then reworked the paintings in his studio and presented the series at Durand-Ruel in 1904, making atmospheric variation the real subject of the whole.
Your reproduction
What the painter must preserve
Fidelity here depends on precise relationships between light, touch, depth and color temperature.
- The exact version of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, B 1725 and W1524
- The original ratio of 73.4 × 100.3 cm
- The towers of Parliament kept very pale in the mist
- The sparkle of the Thames painted without mechanical dots or excessive contrast
Work sheet
| Title | Charing Cross Bridge, Lyon W1524 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Claude Monet (1840 -1926) |
| Date | 1903 |
| Original technique | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 73.4 × 100.3 cm |
| Orientation | Horizontal |
| Conservation | Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, Lyon, France |
| Inventory | B 1725 · Wildenstein 1524 |
| Your reproduction | Handmade oil painting on canvas |
Presentation in your interior
A palette designed with the room
Ash pink, lavender, mist blue, sea green and cream white produce a muffled light. This horizontal reproduction accompanies light interiors, pearl or linen gray walls and soft materials, above a console or sofa.
