À propos de l’œuvre
Pont de Charing, par Claude Monet
Claude Monet · London, 1899 · Carmen Thyssen Collection · W1531
Charing Cross Bridge, Thyssen W1531hand painted reproduction
A pearl blue mist envelops the Thames, the railway bridge and the towers of Westminster. Only a few pink smoke, yellow shards on the water and a purple-blue boat disturb this cold unity. In this 1899 painting, Monet reduces London to a series of floating presences whose distance is measured by their degree of erasure.
Look at the work
The city appears by successive thresholds in an almost monochrome atmosphere
The sky occupies the upper half and changes from blue-gray to lilac-white without breaking. The towers of Parliament stand on the right like two transparent rectangles, while pink and purple masses signal smoke and traffic on the left. The bridge itself becomes a blue horizontal band, interrupted by its piers.
Below this line, the river takes on the colors of the sky but fragments them into small touches of yellow, pink and white. A boat placed at the bottom right introduces the only clearly inclined shape. Its reflection and its blue-purple hull provide a ladder to the bridge piers and silently bring the foreground closer together.
The further away the city goes, the less Monet draws it: Parliament, trains and the bridge exist by the different density of the same mist blues.
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 bridge reduced to an urban skyline
The apron runs through the canvas in the middle without a black outline. The piles should remain slightly denser than air and water, but transparent enough to belong to the mist.
Pink smoke that makes the train noticeable
To the left of Parliament, the small pale pink and purple masses are decisive. They signal railway activity while adding the rare warm temperatures of the sky.
An oblique boat in a horizontal world
The hull in the foreground breaks the bands of the bridge and the river. Its position, size and purple-blue are essential to give depth to this very clear composition.
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 best native view of this version measures 2000 × 1625 px. The two details of 1100 × 1100 px and 1100 × 900 px were taken directly from this file, without artificial enlargement. All three media were encoded and verified as true 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.
Thyssen CTB.1996.7, Wildenstein 1531
The painting is dated 1899, measures 64.8 × 80.6 cm and bears the signature and date "Claude Monet 99" at the bottom right. It is registered under number CTB.1996.7 and listed as Wildenstein 1531.
Three stays between 1899 and 1901
The Museo Thyssen recalls that Monet painted his variations of the Thames during three successive stays, from September 1899 to April 1901. He observed Charing Cross Bridge from the Savoy Hotel, then continued the paintings in his studio in Giverny.
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Charing Cross Bridge belongs to the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection and is deposited at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. The view thus brings together one of Monet's most atmospheric research with a major ensemble of impressionist painting.
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 Carmen Thyssen collection, CTB.1996.7 and W1531
- The original format of 64.8 × 80.6 cm
- The small differences between pearl blue, lilac and gray maintained
- The boat, piles and towers kept visible without hard contours
Work sheet
| Title | Charing Cross Bridge, Thyssen W1531 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Claude Monet (1840 -1926) |
| Date | 1899 |
| Original technique | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 64.8 × 80.6 cm |
| Orientation | Horizontal |
| Conservation | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Carmen Thyssen collection, Madrid, Spain |
| Inventory | CTB.1996.7 · Wildenstein 1531 |
| Your reproduction | Handmade oil painting on canvas |
Presentation in your interior
A palette designed with the room
Pearl blue, lilac, mist pink, pale yellow and purple blue diffuse a calm and refined light. This horizontal reproduction is suitable for a bright bedroom, office or living room, with off-white walls, glass and bluish gray textiles.
