Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day

Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day is one of Claude Monet's views of the Thames from the Savoy Hotel, signed and dated 1903 at lower left. It measures 65.1 × 100 cm and is number 1569 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné. It came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1963 with the Chester Dale Collection (1963.10.183), the great bequest of Impressionist and modern French painting from the New York collector Chester Dale.

What you're looking at

The bridge crosses the canvas firmly, in a band of dark slate and grey-green. Its arches are clear, each opening onto the lighter water beyond, and along the deck a row of rust and ochre touches marks the traffic. At the right end, white and pink clouds of steam billow up over the parapet and down toward the water, as if a steamer had just passed under.

Beyond the bridge, the south bank is a hazy line of buildings, with the tall chimneys and the shot tower rising into a sky of muted rose-beige and grey. Puffs of pink-white smoke at the left echo the steam at the right.

The river below is greenish-grey, painted in short horizontal strokes, with a dark tug and barges at the left and center. The whole scene is muted and warm-grey, with no direct sunlight but a sense of daylight filtered through smoke.

This version is distinct for its density of incident: boats, steam, smoke and traffic. It is one of the busiest and most documentary of the series, a portrait of the working Thames.

Where and when it was painted

Monet painted Waterloo Bridge from his room at the Savoy each morning during his London stays of 1899–1901. Gray days were common, and he painted many canvases on them, valuing the way smoke and soft light flattened the city into tone. He dated this one 1903, after reworking it at Giverny for the 1904 exhibition at Durand-Ruel.

How it was painted

The bridge and chimneys are laid in with relatively firm strokes; the steam and smoke are softer, swirling touches of white tinted with pink. The river is a mosaic of short dashes in grey-green and ochre. The restrained palette and visible structure show Monet's attention to tone rather than color contrast.

How this version differs

In the Waterloo Bridge series, the closest companions are the Ordrupgaard Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day, similar but brighter in its traffic, and the Art Institute of Chicago's cooler Waterloo Bridge, Gray Weather of 1900. The National Gallery of Art also owns Waterloo Bridge, London, at Dusk and Waterloo Bridge, London, at Sunset, so three times of day can be compared in one museum.

A detail to look for

Near the left edge, a low, dark tug sits on the water, with a smaller dark shape beside it, and in the center a long, low barge lies across the river. These working boats are painted in deep blue-black, the darkest color in the picture, and they give the gray day its weight. Above, a bright plume of steam at the right end of the bridge suggests another vessel passing beneath. The Thames was then one of the busiest working rivers in the world, crowded with tugs, lighters and barges serving the docks and riverside factories, and this canvas records that traffic with unusual clarity.

Where to see it

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, free to visit, has one of the largest Monet collections in the United States, much of it from the Chester Dale and Mellon gifts. For Claude Monet's London campaign, see Monet in London; for other museums, where to see Monet's paintings.

Chester Dale, a New York financier, built one of the great American collections of French painting between the 1920s and 1950s. He bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Art on his death in 1962, with the condition that it not be lent; the gallery received it in 1963, and this canvas has been part of it since.