Rouen Cathedral, the Portal, Front View (Harmony in Brown)

What you are looking at

This is the most architectural of all the Rouen Cathedrals. The west front stands perfectly frontal and symmetrical, and more of it is visible than in most of the series: the central gable and its openwork pinnacles, the bases of both towers at the edges, the three portals at the bottom, all set against a flat, pale gray-white sky. The stone is painted in browns, taupes, slate grays and dusky violet, with chalky highlights picking out the edges of tracery and statues.

The light is dull and even, the kind of day when no sun breaks through. That lets the structure read clearly. Look at the great rose window in the center, a deep brown-violet circle crossed by the pale, thin lines of the gable in front of it, and at the small round clock dial just below, a bluish disk. The portals are dark, heavy arches, and the central door is a brownish rectangle at the very bottom. Among the paler, more colorful canvases of the series, this one feels weighty, almost somber.

The signature and date are at lower left.

Rouen, 1892–94

Claude Monet began the cathedral in February 1892, working first from an apartment at 31 place de la Cathédrale, which gave a nearly frontal view like this one. He returned in 1893 and finished the whole series at Giverny in 1894. The Musée d'Orsay dates this canvas to 1892. Twenty cathedrals were shown at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris in May 1895. See the Rouen Cathedral series.

How it was painted

The canvas is one of the larger ones, about 107 by 74 centimeters. The surface is very heavily worked, built up in thick, overlapping touches until the paint stands in ridges like weathered stone. Monet keeps a narrow, earthy palette, but within it there is plenty of color: violet in the shadows, green-gray in the sky, rust in the doorways. The drawing is firmer than usual, with more legible tracery, niches and statues.

Its alternative title, Harmonie brune, places it among the canvases described as color harmonies, like the Orsay's Harmonie bleue and Harmonie blanche.

How this version differs

The Orsay owns five cathedrals, and this is the darkest. The Portal, Grey Weather is also sunless but lighter and silvery; the Portal, Morning Sun is blue; the Full Sunlight blazes gold and blue; and the Morning Effect is white. Outside Paris, the closest match is the Weimar Rouen Cathedral, Portal, with a similar earthy palette.

Why the state bought it

The purchase of 1907 was a sign of how much Monet's standing had changed. In the 1870s the Impressionists had been refused by the official Salon; by the turn of the century their pictures were entering the national collections. The canvas the state acquired is among the most structured and least atmospheric of the series, the one in which the building itself is most legible. At the Musée du Luxembourg it joined the Monets that had arrived with Gustave Caillebotte's bequest in 1897.

Looking closely

Stand close and the surface breaks into a coarse, encrusted relief. The paint in the upper gables is thick enough to cast tiny shadows of its own, and in the tracery Monet scratched and dragged the brush to suggest carved stone. In the lower portals the touches become broader and darker, almost like patches of rust.

Ownership and where to see it

Unlike the four Orsay cathedrals that came from Count Isaac de Camondo, this one was bought directly from Monet by the French state in 1907 for the Musée du Luxembourg, then the national museum of living artists. It moved to the Louvre in 1929 and was assigned to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986 (inventory RF 2779). Catalogued as Wildenstein 1319, it usually hangs with its four companions. See our guide to Monet at the Musée d'Orsay.