Waterloo Bridge, London, Sun Effect

Waterloo Bridge, London, Sun Effect (Waterloo Bridge, effet de soleil) is one of Claude Monet's views of the Thames from the Savoy Hotel, dated by its owner 1899/1901. It measures 65 × 100 cm, is signed lower left, and is number 1593 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné. It belongs to the Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection, whose paintings are on long-term loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich.

What you're looking at

This is the palest of the Waterloo Bridge paintings. Sky, bridge and river are all variations of one milky light, in cream, pale green, pearl grey and lilac. The bridge crosses the canvas in a long sequence of arches, painted not as dark masses but as faint loops of white and pale green, so the structure seems to be made of light. Along its top runs a line of small touches in yellow, pink and pale green, the traffic of carts and omnibuses caught in the sun.

The far bank and its chimneys, so prominent in the grey-weather versions, have vanished in the haze. The only solid shape is in the lower right: a Thames sailing barge with a rust-orange sail, moving downstream, and a second, smaller sail further off. Their warm color is the one strong accent in the picture.

The effect is of sun high behind thin fog, flooding the whole scene with diffused brightness rather than casting shadows. It is the opposite of the dark, sooty London of the gray-day canvases.

Where and when it was painted

Monet worked in London in the autumn of 1899 and in the late winter and spring of 1900 and 1901, painting Waterloo Bridge in the mornings from his room at the Savoy and moving to Charing Cross Bridge and the Houses of Parliament later in the day. He brought the canvases back to Giverny and reworked them together for years, exhibiting thirty-seven London views at Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1904.

How it was painted

The paint is applied in small, dry, interlaced strokes over a pale ground, with little contrast in value. Monet relies on slight differences in temperature, cool green against warm cream, to separate bridge from sky and water. The barge's sail is the thickest paint on the canvas. The handling suggests careful studio reworking: the surface is even and dense, without the loose, unfinished passages of the smaller canvases.

How this version differs

In the Waterloo Bridge series, the closest relatives are the National Museum of Western Art's Waterloo Bridge in London of 1902, similarly pale and with a single barge, and the Paul Allen Waterloo Bridge, Hazy Sun of 1903, where the light turns warmer and pinker. The Art Institute of Chicago's Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect keeps the chimneys visible in a lilac haze. This version is the most bleached of all.

A detail to look for

Look at the lower left, beneath the first arch: a faint, horizontal smudge of darker green, almost lost in the haze. It is a second barge or a lighter, moored near the north bank, and it balances the bright sail at the lower right. Without it, the composition would tip to one side. Monet often placed such barely visible objects at the edges of his London pictures, so faint that they register only after a long look. They work like the soft notes in a piece of music, structuring the picture without breaking the mood of fog and light. In the gallery, they appear only when you stand close.

Ownership and where to see it

Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune bought it from Monet in 1917. It passed through the Geneva collector Franz Burgers and the Lucerne dealer Theodor Fischer before the Zürich gallery Aktuaryus sold it to Emil Bührle in 1942. The Bührle collection is now shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich in its Chipperfield extension. For Monet's other London subjects see Monet in London; for Claude Monet in collections worldwide, where to see Monet's paintings.