À propos de l’œuvre
La Cathédrale de Rouen, le Portail, Soleil, par Claude Monet
Claude Monet · 1894 · Met 30.95.250 · W1325
Rouen Cathedral, the portal, sun W1325hand painted reproduction
Under full sun, the facade of Rouen appears almost incandescent. The cream, pink and yellow reliefs stand out against blue-purple shadows, while the thick paste gives the light a physical presence. This version of the Metropolitan Museum is Wildenstein 1325.
Look at the work
The sculpted portal made palpable by light
The tight framing cuts the towers and brings the rose, the galleries and the three portals closer together. From a distance, the architecture is recomposed; up close, it unravels in thick touches. Monet thus forces the gaze to alternate between monument and pictorial material.
Directly lit areas receive warm whites, yellows and pinks. In the hollows, blues, greens and purples maintain depth. The whole remains bright because the shadows are colored rather than black.
In W1325, Gothic stone seems to produce its own light as color and impasto become inseparable.
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.
Met version 30.95.250
The Metropolitan Museum documents an oil on canvas measuring 99.7 × 65.7 cm, dated 1894. The catalog raisonné gives it the number Wildenstein 1325.
More than thirty views in 1892 -1893
The museum recalls that Monet moved from one canvas to another throughout the day. Each surface corresponded to a particular state of light which he then took up in his workshop in Giverny.
The title of the 1895 exhibition
Among the twenty Cathedrals shown at Durand-Ruel, this work bore the title Le Portail (Soleil). This subtitle remains the key to its visual identity.
Reference image
Read this specific version
Only one image is used: the exact view of W1325, preserved as a real WebP of 2,311 × 3,596 px, without artificial enlargement.
The rose in the middle of a dense facade
The large circular bay remains perceptible without being surrounded. It arises from the contrast between a darker core and the light reliefs which surround it.
Cream, pink, yellow and purple
General heat depends on cold shadows. Purples and blues must maintain their transparency so as not to close the gates.
A sculptural impasto
The paint is deposited in small oriented masses which catch the real light. Reproduction must preserve these thicknesses and their changes of direction.
Documented benchmarks
Three pieces of information specific to this work
The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves this painting under inventory 30.95.250; it measures 99.7 × 65.7 cm and corresponds to Wildenstein 1325.
The Portal (Sun), Wildenstein 1325
This oil on canvas is signed and dated 1894, the year of the final workshop revivals after the Rouen campaigns of 1892 and 1893.
Metropolitan Museum, 30.95.250
The work belongs to the Theodore M. Davis Collection and entered the museum by bequest in 1915. Its object number is the exact marker of the version.
Twenty Cathedrals united in 1895
The Durand-Ruel exhibition made it possible to compare variations. Their common subject revealed less the stability of the monument than the mobility of perception.
Your reproduction
What the painter must preserve
Fidelity here depends on precise relationships between light, touch, depth and color temperature.
- Met version W1325, inventory 30.95.250
- The original vertical format of 99.7 × 65.7 cm
- The cream and pink reliefs balanced by the purple-blue shadows
- The fragmented impasto that makes the light almost tactile
Work sheet
| Title | Rouen Cathedral, the portal, sun W1325 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Claude Monet (1840 -1926) |
| Date | 1894 |
| Original technique | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 99.7 × 65.7 cm |
| Orientation | Vertical |
| Conservation | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States |
| Inventory | 30.95.250 · Wildenstein 1325 |
| Your reproduction | Handmade oil painting on canvas |
Presentation in your interior
A palette designed with the room
Its golden light gives shine to an entrance, library or living room without requiring bright colors around it. Light stone, natural oak and matte brass harmoniously extend its palette.
