Waterloo Bridge, Effect of Sun in the Mist

Le pont de Waterloo, effet de soleil dans la brume (Waterloo Bridge, Effect of Sun in the Mist) is one of Claude Monet's London views of the Thames, painted from the Savoy Hotel. It measures 65 × 92 cm, is number 1577 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné, and belongs to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas (MACCAR) in Venezuela, which has featured it in its public program on the national art heritage. Wikidata dates it to 1900; the date beside the signature at lower right is hard to read in reproduction and may be later.

What you're looking at

The whole picture is steeped in blue and violet. The sky is a dense, lilac-tinged mist with no visible chimneys or buildings, and the bridge crosses it as a darker band of ultramarine and purple, its arches seen in silhouette.

The drama is underneath. Through three of the arches, and along a strip above the bridge's deck, a cold white-gold light breaks out, as if the sun were low on the far side of the river. That light spills down onto the water as short, bright, horizontal strokes, which pile up in a broad shimmering path across the lower half of the canvas. The rest of the river is a deep blue-violet.

What makes this version distinct is the color temperature. Many sunlit versions of the bridge, such as those in Denver and Baltimore, warm the light to gold or orange. Here the sunlight is pale and silvery, and the mist around it is cold, which gives the canvas a wintry, early-morning stillness.

Where and when it was painted

Monet stayed at the Savoy Hotel in the autumn of 1899 and the late winters of 1900 and 1901, painting Waterloo Bridge in the mornings, when the sun rose downstream behind it. He took the canvases back to Giverny, reworked them for several years, and showed a selection at Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1904, in the exhibition Vues de la Tamise à Londres.

How it was painted

The mist is built from thin, scumbled layers of violet and blue dragged over one another. The bridge is laid in darker, flatter strokes. The light on the water is the thickest paint, short horizontal dabs of white with yellow and pink, set on top of the dark river so they seem to float. The method, dark base and bright broken touches on top, is the same one Monet used across the series to make light flicker.

How this version differs

In the Waterloo Bridge series, its nearest relatives are the Santa Barbara Waterloo Bridge, where light glows through the arches above a gold river, and the Hermitage's Waterloo Bridge, Effect of Fog, almost entirely violet. The Ottawa Waterloo Bridge: the Sun in a Fog shows the sun itself as a red disc; here it is hidden, felt only through its light.

Monet and London fog

Monet had first seen London in 1870–71, when he took refuge there during the Franco-Prussian War, and he returned in 1899 partly to paint the winter fogs he remembered. The fogs of the period were thick with coal smoke from homes and factories, and they colored the light in ways no French city offered: brown, yellow, violet, red. His letters from London describe waiting for the fog and despairing when the weather was clear. The cold, violet mist of this canvas is one of the many types he recorded. Modern scientists have even used his London pictures as evidence for the history of urban air pollution.

Where to see it

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, founded in 1973 in the Parque Central complex, holds one of the largest collections of modern art in Latin America. Opening hours and displays have varied in recent years, so check before visiting. For Claude Monet's London campaign, see Monet in London; for other locations, where to see Monet's paintings.