Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge
photo: sotheby’s
This spectacular view of Waterloo Bridge belongs to the iconic series that Claude Monet completed following his visits to London at the turn of the century. The whispering fog and ghostly silhouettes of the industrial towers and the Houses of Parliament in this breathtaking series signal the beginning of the artist’s shift towards abstraction, forming the most meaningful transition between the Haystacks of the 1890s and the later Nymphéas. Taking in the view from what would have been his room at the Savoy Hotel, Waterloo Bridge looks south-east down the river. Although no painting of Waterloo Bridge is dated earlier than 1899, it has been assumed that Monet began work on this important series during his first stay in the winter of 1870-71. He executed a small number of known paintings on his early trips and expressed his strong desire to return and devote more time to the views of the river. His most productive visits were then in the autumn of 1899, spring 1900 and from January to April 1901.
The artist delighted in the wide-ranging conditions of the banks along the Thames, varying from luminescent sunrises to the atmosphere of dense fog and industrial pollution caused by the smokestacks. Though he worked on a number of oils of Waterloo Bridge when he was back home in Giverny, Monet specifically chose to work in pastel for his en-plein-aircompositions as it enabled maximum agility to capture the fleeting and wildly fluctuating variety of scenes. The artist commented in a letter to his wife Alice: ‘The weather was magnificent but unsettled… I can’t begin to describe a day as wonderful as this. One marvel after another, each lasting less than five minutes, it was enough to drive one mad. No country could be more extraordinary for a painter’ (quoted in Turner, Whistler, Monet (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 2004, p. 181).
British artists J.M.W. Turner and James McNeill Whistler had a profound influence on Monet’s paintings of the Thames. Before him, they had succeeded in shifting the focus away from the traditional treatment of landscape with its detail-orientated aesthetic - evidenced in works such as those by John Constable - towards the depiction of the ephemeral impression of atmosphere, something which had a lasting effect on Monet (see figs. 1 and 2). In turn, Monet’s innovative and abstracted aesthetic, as demonstrated in paintings such as Waterloo Bridge, are among the most important contributions to twentieth-century art and create a lasting legacy that can be seen not only in the work of his immediate artistic contemporaries but in the experiments of the Abstract Expressionists almost half a century later.
The overwhelming majority of Monet’s depictions of Waterloo Bridge are now in public collections around the world, including The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; The Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Hermitage St. Petersburg and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (fig. 3). The rarity and desirability of this series is demonstrated in the illustrious provenance of the present work. Waterloo Bridge was purchased in 1990 by Bernard and Josephine Chaus. Remembered as extraordinary entrepreneurs, Bernard and Josephine made a lasting mark on the fashion industry, championing the innovative concept of reasonably-priced women’s sportswear. Josephine served as one of the first female chief executive officers of a public company. The couple are remembered today for their passion and resilience and celebrated as inspirations by the fashion industry and all those who knew them.