Some artists give us a more accurate perspective on the world. Few people go farther. They see beyond seeing. More sensed than seen, their truth is more profound. One of them is Claude Monet. The French Impressionist, who was then getting close to 60, started one of the most ambitious series of incisive paintings ever attempted by any artist during three trips to London between 1899 and 1901. This project is currently the subject of a ground-breaking exhibition at the Courtauld Institute called Monet and London: Views of the Thames.
Monet created about 100 paintings from a dark haze of soot-filled, deadly smog that choked the Thames’s breath—more than he would ever paint on any other subject in his lengthy career. His ephemeral visions would permanently alter the world’s perception of the “unreal city,” as TS Eliot would later call it, as a place beyond place that sits outside of time, an ethereal elsewhere. These visions would turn the weight of London’s crowded bridges and imposing palaces into intangible tapestries of vibrating vapour.
One installment of the expansive series London, The Houses of Parliament, Shaft of Sunlight in the Fog has the potential to evaporate. One of Monet’s most well-known views of the Thames, the artwork depicts the turrets’ dynamic motion.
