Charing Cross Bridge, London

Charing Cross Bridge, London is a canvas Claude Monet painted from the Savoy Hotel and signed and dated 1901. It shows the Thames railway bridge at the end of the day, a skeletal blue-green shape in a pale mist shot with yellow, while the silhouette of the Houses of Parliament rises at upper right and a burst of golden light breaks through at the corner. Monet's dealer Durand-Ruel recorded it as Londres, Charing Cross Bridge, soleil couchant (sunset). It has been in the Art Institute of Chicago since 1933, part of the Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection.

What you are looking at

The canvas is wide, 65 by 92 cm. The bridge crosses just below the middle, a thin turquoise band with piers in groups of two and three. At left, above the deck, a cluster of rounded puffs in blue, pink and green, painted like a string of beads, is the smoke of a train heading into Charing Cross station. Behind, on the right, the Victoria Tower and the clock tower of Westminster are pale green-blue verticals dissolving into the haze.

The most striking passage is the upper right corner. There, Monet painted a patch of thick, warm yellow strokes, much denser than anything else in the picture, where the setting sun burns through the fog behind Parliament. The rest of the sky is a pearly mixture of lilac, pale yellow and green. The river below repeats the same tones in soft horizontal strokes, with a faint pinkish reflection under the bridge. A dark violet mass of Embankment foliage fills the bottom right corner, and the signature and date, Claude Monet 1901, are written in purple just above it.

Where and when it was painted

Monet made his third and last London campaign from late January to April 1901, staying again at the Savoy. As the Art Institute notes, his nearly hundred Thames pictures show only three views: Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge from the hotel, and the Houses of Parliament from St Thomas' Hospital. Late in the day the sun set upriver, beyond Westminster, so a sunset effect in the Charing Cross view put the light directly behind the towers. See our Monet in London hub.

How it was painted

The handling combines thin, scumbled layers in the sky with a thicker, more textured buildup in the sunlit corner. The bridge is reduced to a few strokes, its rectilinear frame described by the museum as reminiscent of bridges in the Japanese prints Monet collected. Everything is held in a high, pale key; even the darkest areas, the foliage and the smoke, are mid-toned.

Monet kept the canvas at Giverny for several years of reworking and sold it to Durand-Ruel only in October 1905, for 8,000 francs. The dealer sold it that December, through an agent, to the Prince de Wagram, a young aristocrat who was then buying Impressionist pictures in quantity, and bought it back from him in April 1914.

The Chicago provenance

Durand-Ruel shipped it to New York, and in February 1916 the Chicago collector Martin A. Ryerson acquired it in exchange for a Renoir still life of peonies plus $1,000. Ryerson, a lumber heir and the Art Institute's longtime benefactor, left his collection to the museum on his death in 1932, and the painting entered the collection the next year.

How this version differs

Among the Charing Cross canvases, this is the clearest sunset. The sun, implied in many versions, is here given a concentrated patch of yellow, and the beaded smoke at left is one of the most decorative details in the series. Compare the cooler, morning Thyssen-Bornemisza version, or the coral sunset reflections of the privately owned canvas. The Cardiff picture is close in color and date. All versions are on our Charing Cross Bridge series page.

Where to see it

The painting (1933.1150) is on view in the Art Institute of Chicago's Impressionist galleries, which hold one of the largest Monet collections anywhere, including six of the Stacks of Wheat; see our Monet at the Art Institute of Chicago guide and where to see Monet's paintings.