Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect

Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect is one of Claude Monet's views of the Thames from the Savoy Hotel, inscribed Claude Monet 1903 at lower right. It measures 65.7 × 101 cm and is number 1586 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné. It came to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1933 with the Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection (1933.1163) and hangs in Gallery 243 with the museum's other Waterloo Bridge, Gray Weather.

What you're looking at

Lilac and pale blue fill the canvas. The bridge spans it in a sequence of arches painted in blue-violet with pale cream highlights on the piers, so it seems to be made of tinted light rather than granite. Along its deck, a scatter of tiny touches in orange, yellow, red and green flickers: the traffic of carts and omnibuses, struck by sun.

Beyond, the chimneys and the shot tower of the south bank are faint violet shapes in a hazy sky warmed with rose at the left, where pink smoke drifts. The river is a lavender-blue sheet, with long, soft reflections under the arches and paler strokes of reflected light.

This canvas's distinction lies in how the sun is shown. There is no disc and no path of glitter on the water. Instead, the sunlight is diffused through haze into an all-over brightness, and it is concentrated only in those small, jewel-like dabs on the bridge.

Where and when it was painted

In London, Monet painted Waterloo Bridge each morning, moving to Charing Cross Bridge at midday and in the afternoon, all from his fifth-floor window at the Savoy. The Art Institute believes both of its Waterloo Bridge paintings were begun in 1900 and dated only when Monet felt they were finished. He worked on the London series together at Giverny and refused to send any to his dealer until he was satisfied with the ensemble.

How it was painted

The surface is dense and finely woven, with small, crossing strokes in close tones of violet, blue, pink and cream. The traffic touches are the thickest paint. Monet uses complementary accents, orange against blue-violet, to make the sunlit details vibrate in the haze.

How this version differs

In the Waterloo Bridge series, it is the sunlit opposite of Chicago's Waterloo Bridge, Gray Weather. It shares its title with canvases in Denver (Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect), Milwaukee (Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect) and Hamilton, Ontario, each with a different balance of haze and glare; Denver's includes white puffs of steam on a glittering river.

A detail to look for

Look at the piers of the bridge: each one is touched with a pale cream highlight on its upstream face, the side catching the light. These small marks give the bridge its rhythm and a sense of volume, although everything else about it is dissolved in haze. Then look beneath the arches, where the water reflects the same cream as soft vertical strokes. Between the highlights on the stone and their reflections, Monet sets up a pattern that runs right across the canvas. It is a subtle effect, best seen in person, and it explains why the bridge stays legible even in so much light.

Ownership and where to see it

Durand-Ruel bought the canvas from Monet in May 1904, recording it as La Tamise à Londres, Waterloo Bridge, effet de soleil, 1903, and sold it through its New York branch in 1905. It later came back to Durand-Ruel before reaching the Chicago collector Martin A. Ryerson, a major benefactor of the museum. See Monet at the Art Institute of Chicago, Monet in London and Claude Monet.

Martin A. Ryerson, a Chicago lumber heir and longtime trustee and president of the Art Institute, collected Impressionist paintings from the 1890s onward and bequeathed them to the museum, where they arrived in 1933. His bequest brought several Monets to Chicago, and with this canvas the museum gained its second picture from the Waterloo Bridge series.