Rouen Cathedral in the evening. What did Claude Monet paint in the Rouen Cathedral series? Cathedral in Rouen, portal in gray tone

27.09.2019

“Imagine a room on the walls of which paintings are hung in a sequence that reproduces the changes in objects depending on changes in light: first a gray series - a huge dark mass that gradually becomes lighter and lighter, then a white series, imperceptibly moving from a weak flicker to an ever-increasing the play of light, culminating in the flashes of the rainbow series, and beyond blue series, where the light softens again into blue, melting like a bright heavenly vision. The colors are permeated with black, gray, white, blue, red light - all its shades. From the way these twenty paintings are hung, they seem to us like twenty discoveries, but I am afraid that the close connection that unites them will elude the viewer if he does not pay enough attention to them." So in the article "The Revolution of the Cathedrals" the future Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau described the exhibition at which Claude Monet presented to the public a series of paintings " Rouen Cathedral".

Rouen Cathedral. Postcard from 1881
This is the view from Monet's studio

Rouen Cathedral
Modern photo from Wikipedia, as during my trips to Rouen in 2012 and 2015
The facade was restored and was partially closed (.

Monet spent many years preparing for this exhibition, which took place in May 1895 at the Parisian gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel. Creating series of paintings that are interconnected and complementary to one another has occupied the artist for a long time. In the cycles "Gare Saint-Lazare" (1877), "Haystacks" (1890 - 1891), "Poplars" (1891), Monet repeatedly depicted similar subjects in different lighting and weather conditions, moving more and more decisively from a single landscape or a group of thematically similar ones landscapes to the united general plan series. However, if in his first series Monet still paid tribute to tradition, changing the point of view and composition, then in the series “Rouen Cathedral” he proposed a truly revolutionary solution: all the paintings depict, with very minor variations, the same thing - a fragment of the western facade of the famous gothic cathedral in Rouen.

Fragment of the western facade of Rouen Cathedral

Why did Monet choose this subject? Other critics try to justify the artist’s choice by interest in Gothic architecture, which arose in France at the end of the century in the wake of national revival, but this explanation can hardly be accepted. The greatness of the Gothic was not reflected in any way in Monet’s paintings: for him, an architectural masterpiece and a haystack were equally interesting. Light stone, the play of light and shadow, carved lace - all this became for the artist an ideal “screen” on which the changes taking place in nature day after day, from dawn to dusk, were reflected.

Left: house on Cathedral Square(formerly Levi's store, now a tourist office),
in which Monet rented one of his Rouen workshops

Work on "Cathedrals" took more than two years. The first two paintings, which date back to the beginning of February 1892, stand apart in the series - judging by the angle, the artist painted them on the square, located to the northwest of the cathedral. Monet worked on the following canvases, created from February to April of the same year, in a specially rented apartment opposite the cathedral, converted into a workshop. From a window on the second floor, the artist watched the façade of the cathedral day after day, working simultaneously on several canvases. He took the unfinished canvases home to Giverny and continued to improve them from memory, and in 1893 he repeated everything all over again - he arrived in Rouen in February, rented an apartment, now in another house, and until April he painted the cathedral from the window. The last six works were created in the third apartment, into which the artist moved for purely domestic reasons. This explains the minor compositional differences between the canvases of the series and once again proves the randomness of the composition of the paintings. The series was finally completed only in 1894 in Giverny.

Third from the left is the window of Monet's studio

The work, as grandiose as the Rouen Cathedral itself, exhausted Monet. He rewrote his canvases many times, destroyed them in despair, and started again (which explains the conflicting information about total number paintings, from 28 to 40, counting sketches). His letters from Rouen to his wife and friends are full of complaints and doubts: “I’m broken, I can’t take it anymore /…/ My nights are full of nightmares: the cathedral is falling on my head, it seems blue, then pink, then yellow.” “I work so hard that I’m close to a stroke from fatigue.” "I can't think of anything but the cathedral." "I am completely confused and dissatisfied with what I did here. I aimed too high, but it seems I overdid it, ruining what was good. I have not been able to work for four days now and have decided to quit everything and return home. I won’t even packing up my canvases - I don’t want to see them, at least for a while. , the fourth dimension is time.

Rouen Cathedral. Symphony of blue and pink

There is a legend (supposedly, this is the memory of Monet himself) about how the very idea of the series arose. Once the artist was painting en plein air, but the lighting had changed so much that he could not continue the canvas he had started. Monet asked to bring a new canvas from home, but soon the lighting changed again, and he was forced to start working on another canvas, and so on, until the series was completed.

Facade of Rouen Cathedral

Of course, Monet's interest in the series had various reasons - in particular, we must not forget about his passion Japanese art and the famous graphic series of Hokusai. Nevertheless, this anecdote accurately reflects the contradiction that Impressionism inevitably encountered in its logical development, and which Monet sought to resolve in the series. The feeling of constant variability of the world, the uniqueness of every moment, characteristic of the impressionists, led to the idea that a static object of painting, independent of the surrounding light-air environment, does not exist at all. And if the artist’s task is to capture a series of light effects, then this is possible not in a single canvas, but in a series. A series of paintings takes on a dramaturgy suggested to the artist by nature itself; the plot chosen by the author dynamically changes and develops over time. That is why it was so important for Monet to arrange the works in a strict sequence: only with such a presentation of the moments captured on each of the canvases was a temporal extension formed.

West façade at noon

At the same time, the motif itself, repeated from picture to picture, is no longer as important as its metamorphoses. The central “character” of the series is not the cathedral, but the light: changing before our eyes, the pearlescent-iridescent walls dematerialize, dissolving, like a mirage, in a light-air environment. “The older I get, the more I realize that I must work to reproduce what I am looking for: the instantaneous effect of atmosphere on things and the light diffused throughout everything,” wrote Claude Monet in 1891. He did not like to theorize (“I always hated those terrible theories”) and expressed his creative aspirations in three words: “I seek the impossible.” In this search for the impossible, in the painful pursuit of the moment, Monet spent the years devoted to the “Rouen Cathedral” series, which, according to critics, became the quintessence of impressionism.

Evening. Harmony in brown

When Monet finally considered the series complete and presented it to the public, the times of misunderstanding and ridicule of the Impressionists had already passed. Monet's works - including those from the series preceding the Cathedrals - sold well, and even before the opening of the exhibition, eight Cathedrals were sold. The twenty paintings in the series included in the exhibition were received favorably by fellow artists and critics, although Monet was reproached for being too enthusiastic technical methods, and his canvases were compared to “the view through the curtain.”

Rouen Cathedral in the evening

However, Monet’s desire, who saw the series as a single work, not to separate the paintings, did not come true - there was no buyer ready to purchase all twenty canvases, each of which was valued at 15,000 francs. Against the will of the author, “Cathedrals” were sold to various buyers, and today paintings from the series adorn museum and private collections in many countries. Only a hundred years after the end of the series, in May 1994, seventeen “Cathedrals” met briefly in Rouen, at an exhibition in the city museum fine arts. But the scattered series “Rouen Cathedral” also became one of the most notable artistic phenomena the end of the 19th century, was ahead of its time and connected two centuries. "Oh, those cathedrals of his!" - the heroine exclaims enthusiastically
Marcel Proust's novel Sodom and Gomorrah (1921).

West façade and Saint-Romain Tower

Monet, the last of the Impressionists, is called the harbinger of abstract art. “Forget about what you see in front of you, be it a tree, a house or a field, just tell yourself: here is a small blue square, here is a pink rectangle, here is a yellow stripe, and draw not objects, but their color components,” these words Monet is perceived as a parting word not only to the artist’s contemporaries, but also to future abstractionists.

Claude Monet. Water lilies. Fragment. 1917-1920

It is symbolic that in the same 1895, when “Cathedrals” was exhibited at Durand-Ruel, an exhibition of impressionists was held in Moscow, at which thirty-year-old Wassily Kandinsky saw Monet’s painting “Haystacks,” which became the first step on his path to abstractionism. “...Deep under the consciousness, the subject was discredited as a necessary element of the picture,” Kandinsky conveyed his impression of “Stacks” in the book “Steps” (1913). Kandinsky’s words echo the discussion about Monet’s “Cathedrals” by another pioneer of non-figurative art, Kazimir Malevich: “It’s not a cathedral that is needed, but painting, and where and from what it was taken is not important to us, just as it doesn’t matter from which shell the pearls were chosen” (“ On new systems in art", 1919).

Painting by Jackson Pollock

Abstract art is usually associated with later creativity Monet, and above all - works from the grandiose series "Water Lilies": individual fragments of these works could, it seems, be painted by a representative of abstract expressionism - Jackson Pollock or Andre Masson. But in this sense, “Cathedrals” cannot be underestimated. After all, it was in “Cathedrals” that the artist most consistently declared the secondary nature of the object in relation to the actual pictorial effects. Even the names of individual works in the “Cathedrals” series bring us closer to non-objective art: “Brown Harmony”, “Harmony of Blue and Gold”, “Symphony of Gray and Pink”.

Roy Lichtenstein. Rouen Cathedral. 1969

Monet, who introduced fine arts the very concept of the series inspired one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Roy Lichtenstein, a representative of the opposite direction to abstractionism - pop art. Lichtenstein paid tribute to Monet in his own version of the Rouen Cathedral series (1969). By superimposing his “signature” typographic raster onto three works by Monet and thereby placing them in context popular culture, he emphasized the enduring greatness of Monet's painting.

Photo: http://www.tendanceouest.com/print.php?id=77008

And finally, Monet’s work on the “Rouen Cathedral” series itself is reminiscent of a modern performance: imagine how, day after day, month after month, he sits by the window in front of several easels and, hiding from the gaze of street onlookers, paints a cathedral, a cathedral, a cathedral... The master would probably have liked what can be seen today from this historical window: annual laser shows fabulously transform the walls of the ancient Rouen Cathedral, and along the façade that Monet immortalized, his paintings float - haystacks, water lilies in a pond, fields of red poppies, sea rocks, lady with an umbrella, garden in Giverny...

Laser show "Paintings by Monet" on the facade of Rouen Cathedral. 2014
photo: http://www.tendanceouest.com/print.php?id=77008

It seems that Monet would have approved of the action that took place in front of the Rouen town hall in June 2010: here, on square six hundred square meters, 1,250 people gathered, and each of them held in their hands an enlarged fragment of a painting from the “Rouen Cathedral” series. The "living picture" was photographed and filmed from a helicopter to provide evidence for the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rouen, action "Rouen Cathedral", 2010

Where is: d'Orsay Museum, impressionist hall
What to see: find differences from the cathedrals stored in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow).

All four paintings are NOT from the Musée d'Orsay. To find out the place of "registration", just hover your mouse over the reproduction.

Monet's largest cycle of works is dedicated to the Rouen Cathedral, or more precisely, to its western facade, decorated with sculpture reflecting the development trends of French Gothic; The façade is flanked by two large towers - the Saint-Roman Tower to the north and the Butter Tower to the south. The name of the latter is due to the fact that funds received from grateful citizens who were allowed to eat butter during Lent were invested in its construction.

Monet arrived in Rouen, a city located in northern France, on February 5, 1892, and rented a room at the Angleterre Hotel on Avenue Boieldieu. He painted his first view of the cathedral's façade from a hotel window. Then the artist went to Paris for some time. Upon his return, he obtained permission to work, sitting in the window of the Fernand Levy fashion store, overlooking the cathedral square.

The series dedicated to the Rouen Cathedral consisted of fifty paintings made in the same format. This cycle occupies an important place in Monet’s work; the artist worked on it systematically, with special care, as never before. Every half hour he tried to capture the fleeting states of the light-air environment and convey subtle halftones of color. On April 3, Monet wrote to Alice Hoscheda: “Every day I discover something new, something I have not seen before.” The store owner, who noticed that female visitors were reacting strangely to the artist’s presence, asked him to henceforth hide behind a screen and limit his activities to the morning hours. On February 15 of the following year, Monet returned to Rouen, staying at the same hotel and staying there until March 15. He deliberately chose the same period as last year, wanting to work in the same lighting, but nevertheless was forced to slightly change his angle of view, moving to the building of the Eduard Moki plant on Bolshoy Most Street. The new viewing location was located in close proximity to the hotel, from the windows of which Monet first captured the view of the cathedral. The rooms allocated for workshops were located on the second floor, from their windows overlooking the cathedral square, Monet’s gaze revealed a magnificent view of the cathedral. The artist chose high point vision, allowing him to maximally cover an object, from which he could not move a great distance. Majestic view The facade, occupying the entire space of the canvas, made a stunning impression on the viewer with its power.

Monet immortalized the appearance of the cathedral, which became a symbol of France, without giving special significance his architectural features, being interested, first of all, in color reflexes on stone when different angles refraction of sunlight. The building completely dissolves in the light-air environment characteristic of a certain time of day: at dawn it is shrouded in moist air vapor, at sunset it is illuminated by warm pink rays, the fluctuations of the bright midday light give it power. In windy weather, the surface of the stone appears pockmarked, and in sunny days- dark gray.

While working on the series, the artist was in an anxious, confused state of mind; Dissatisfied with himself, he destroyed many of the paintings from this cycle. In the same letter to Alice Osheda, he wrote: “At night I was overcome by nightmares, the cathedral seemed to collapse on me, knocking me off my feet. It was sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes yellow.”

In the series dedicated to the Rouen Cathedral, the main structural element is the light that ignites the colors and reflects off the stone surface, imitating the shape of objects and giving depth to a three-dimensional image. The artist no longer uses neutral tones to convey shadows; there are no clearly defined areas on the canvas with a predominance of dark or light. The shadows are written bright colors. Atmospheric effects are transferred to the canvas, it seems that time has frozen for a moment. Light seems to reveal the immaterial nature of objects, nature finds its harmony in light and eternal movement: every moment its appearance is transformed.

Monet began to work early in the morning, without waiting for seven o'clock, with backlight, as the sun rose behind the cathedral, and its rays fell on the building from behind, barely highlighting the contours of the towers and spiers. At noon, when the sun was at its zenith, the entire building was illuminated with dazzling light. sunlight, only the portals obscured by the facade remained in the shadows. In the afternoon, towards evening, the shadows of nearby houses painted the façade in various shades blue. This is how Georges Clemenceau described his impressions of the series of “cathedrals”: art critic and a close friend of Monet, who often visited his house in Giverny and a true admirer of his talent: “At first the gray series is a huge gray mass, which gradually brightens more and more; then a white series, imperceptibly moving from a faint flicker to an ever-increasing play of light, culminating in the flashes of a rainbow series; and then the blue series, where the light softens again into blue, melting like a bright heavenly vision.” For the sake of emancipation visual perception Monet even sacrificed perspective - an immutable principle of European fine art since the 15th century. His painting style shows the influence of Japanese prints, which became widespread in France in the 1860s.

Repeating the motif dozens of times, transforming in the rays of light at different times of the day, Monet changed the generally accepted idea of the painting as a complete, self-sufficient work. The same Clemenceau wrote: “The artist consciously creates 20 paintings for one motif, as if wanting to convince us that it is possible and even necessary to create dozens, hundreds and even thousands of works, reflecting every moment of life, every heartbeat. The naked eye can see that the appearance of the cathedral is constantly transformed in the rays of light. Even the attentive eye of an outside observer is able to catch these changes and notice subtle fluctuations. What can we say about the painter, whose eye is much more perfect. Monet, being an artist ahead of his time, teaches us to perceive visual images and see the world more subtly."

The series of “cathedrals” was completed on April 14, 1893; at the final stage, Monet worked in his home studio. On May 10, 1895, twenty paintings from this cycle were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris and were a huge success.

Normandy is a region of modern France with ancient history. The Romans called this area Celtic Gaul. At the same time, the first settlement arose in the place where the city of Rouen (France) is located today. As the administrative center of Normandy, it annually welcomes thousands of tourists who come to explore local attractions, including the famous Cathedral.

Capital of the Duke of Normandy

Already in the 3rd century AD. e. Rouen was a prosperous city in Roman Gaul with baths and an amphitheater. When local residents adopted Christianity, it is not known for sure, but the work of the Rouen bishop Victricius, dated to the end of the 4th century, has been preserved, where it is reported that at that time a Christian basilica was being built in the city.

Gaul was later conquered by the Franks and by the middle of the 9th century, when the Norman raids began, it was part of the West Frankish kingdom. During these raids, Rouen was repeatedly sacked by warlike Normans. Finally, in 911, the Frankish king Charles III, in accordance with the peace treaty concluded, declared Rollo, the leader of the Normans, duke of the territory he had conquered.

The duchy became known as Normandy, and Rouen became its capital. Rollo, like many of his fellow tribesmen, converted to Christianity, receiving the name Robert at baptism. Rouen Cathedral is where the remains of the first Duke of Normandy rest today.

From Romanesque basilica to Gothic cathedral

The first Christian temple in Rouen was destroyed during one of the Norman raids. The building was not restored, but in its place, after the formation of the duchy in the 10th century, another basilica in the Romanesque style with a baptistery was built. From ancient building Only the crypt has survived to this day, which can be seen when visiting Rouen Cathedral.

The austere architecture of the Romanesque style was replaced by the sublime Gothic style. Like many other churches in France, the Rouen Cathedral in the 12th century began to be built in accordance with the new architectural style. The work lasted for several centuries, so the temple itself can be considered a unique illustration of the history of Norman Gothic.

Tower of Saint Romain

The Saint-Romain Tower is the oldest surviving part of the cathedral dedicated to Our Lady of Rouen. Below it is the baptistery, reminiscent of the Romanesque basilica that once stood on this site.

The tower is named after one of the bishops of the city - Romain, who lived in the 7th century, who, according to legend, defeated the monster that lived in the Seine. It is a pity that Saint Romain could not save the tower that bears his name during the Second World War. As a result of the Allied bombing, the Rouen Cathedral was greatly damaged, in particular, only the walls remained of the Saint-Romain Tower.

Within twelve post-war years Restoration work was carried out in the cathedral. But let's return to the history of the tower. Its construction began in 1145, in the early Gothic era, and the last floors were completed in the late Gothic era. There are 813 steps leading to the top of the 82-meter building, which rises above the nave.

Since the 16th century, the Saint-Romain Tower was crowned by a tin-covered wooden spire, until in 1822 it burned down from a direct lightning strike. Later it was replaced by a metal one with four turrets, although one of them was demolished several years ago strong hurricane, swept over the north of France.

Architectural eclecticism

Rouen Cathedral, the architecture of which forms a single ensemble with the archbishop's palace, is one of the important monuments of French medieval Gothic.

True, its planning scheme with radial chapels around the apse is inherent in the earlier Romanesque style. The colonnade surrounding the vast altar of the temple, in early XIII century was also considered an outdated architectural solution.

But the facade with its stone ligature, many arches, a string of statues of saints and apostles is a shining example Norman Gothic at its peak. The Tour de Beur, that is, the Butter Tower, was built in this style, the yellowish stone for which was brought from Wales.

The central cross of the cathedral is crowned by a lantern tower with the tallest spire in all of France. This iron-forged spire was installed in the 19th century, and against the backdrop medieval architecture it looks too technologically advanced.

What you can't miss

The Rouen Cathedral cannot fail to impress, especially on those visiting it for the first time. The height of the ceiling in the central part of the temple is comparable to the height of a modern twenty-story building, and the length of the central passage is 137 m. Under the ceiling, instead of the planned balconies, openwork windows were made.

Cathedrals often served as burial places for rulers and church prelates. In addition to the tomb of the first Duke of Normandy, Rollon and his son, the heart of Richard the Lionheart rests in the Rouen Cathedral and the sarcophagi of several archbishops are installed.

Medieval Normandy was famous for its craftsmen who made stained glass windows of an unusual azure color. Therefore, it is not surprising that Rouen Cathedral also possesses these 13th-century artifacts.

A description of the temple would be incomplete without saying a few words about the chapel of the Virgin Mary. Here, in addition to stained glass windows, you can get acquainted with the main icons of the cathedral and examine medieval carved benches and panels.

Rouen Cathedral by Monet

World fame Cathedral brought a series of works by the French impressionist Claude Monet. The artist worked on it for more than two years, periodically coming to Rouen to capture the western façade of the temple at different times of the day.

In total, Monet created fifty paintings in one format. The first of them was painted by the artist in a hotel room located opposite the cathedral. On his next visit to Rouen, Monet worked in a store window whose windows overlooked the square in front of the temple. Returning a year later, the artist rented a factory workshop for his studio with a magnificent view of the Rouen Cathedral.

Monet tried to notice and capture on canvas subtle changes in the light environment depending on the time of day and weather conditions. Every half hour, he carefully recorded fluctuations in color shades, thus achieving a gradual transformation of the appearance of the cathedral in the rays of sunlight.

Curiosities of the Cathedral

Claude Monet was not the only one who was inspired by Rouen Cathedral. Interesting facts also associated with the name French writer Gustave Flaubert. As a native of Rouen, he was no doubt well acquainted with the main temple of the city. In particular, a stained glass window dedicated to the story of St. Julian the Hospitaller inspired Flaubert to write one of his “Three Tales.”

Observing the installation of an iron spire over the central cross of the cathedral, Flaubert sarcastically described such an architectural solution as the whim of an enraged steam boiler manufacturer. Nevertheless, the spire branded by the writer brought Rouen Cathedral the glory of the tallest building in the world in 1876-1880.

Returning to Monet, we note that he destroyed some of his paintings with views of the Rouen Cathedral, and approximately 30 of the remaining ones were presented to the public in 1895. Monet sold some of them for 3-5 thousand francs, and not so long ago one painting from the famous cycle was has already been sold for $24 million.

Cultural heritage of the country

Rouen Cathedral is located in historical center town, surrounded by well-preserved medieval, baroque and half-timbered houses. To appreciate the restrained beauty of Gothic architecture and feel the spirit of the distant Middle Ages, a leisurely inspection of the main temple of the city is required.

Rouen (France) spends a considerable part of the city budget on maintaining its historical attractions, in particular on the restoration of the cathedral, declared cultural heritage countries.

“Imagine a room on the walls of which paintings are hung in a sequence that reproduces the changes in objects depending on changes in light: first a gray series - a huge dark mass that gradually becomes lighter and lighter, then a white series, imperceptibly moving from a weak flicker to an ever-increasing the play of light, culminating in the flashes of the rainbow series, and then the blue series, where the light again softens into blue, melting like a bright heavenly vision. The colors are permeated with black, gray, white, blue, red light - all its shades. These twenty paintings are hung, they seem to us like twenty discoveries, but I am afraid that the close connection that unites them will elude the viewer if he does not pay enough attention to them.” Thus, in the article “The Revolution of the Cathedrals”, the future Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau described the exhibition at which Claude Monet presented to the public a series of paintings “Rouen Cathedral”.

Rouen Cathedral. Postcard from 1881
This is the view from Monet's studio

Rouen Cathedral
Modern photo from Wikipedia, as during my trips to Rouen in 2012 and 2015
The facade was restored and was partially closed (.

Monet spent many years preparing for this exhibition, which took place in May 1895 at the Parisian gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel. Creating series of paintings that are interconnected and complementary to one another has occupied the artist for a long time. In the cycles "Gare Saint-Lazare" (1877), "Haystacks" (1890 - 1891), "Poplars" (1891), Monet repeatedly depicted similar subjects in different lighting and weather conditions, moving more and more decisively from a single landscape or a group of thematically similar ones landscapes to a series united by a common concept. However, if in his first series Monet still paid tribute to tradition, changing the point of view and composition, then in the series “Rouen Cathedral” he proposed a truly revolutionary solution: all the paintings depict, with very minor variations, the same thing - a fragment of the western facade of the famous Gothic cathedral in Rouen.

Fragment of the western facade of Rouen Cathedral

Why did Monet choose this subject? Other critics try to justify the artist’s choice by interest in Gothic architecture, which arose in France at the end of the century on the wave of national revival, but this explanation can hardly be accepted. The greatness of the Gothic was not reflected in any way in Monet’s paintings: for him, an architectural masterpiece and a haystack were equally interesting. Light stone, the play of light and shadow, carved lace - all this became for the artist an ideal “screen” on which the changes taking place in nature day after day, from dawn to dusk, were reflected.

Left: house on Cathedral Square (former Levi's store, now a tourist office),
in which Monet rented one of his Rouen workshops

Third from the left is the window of Monet's studio

The work, as grandiose as the Rouen Cathedral itself, exhausted Monet. He rewrote the canvases many times, destroyed them in despair and started again (which explains the conflicting information about the total number of paintings, from 28 to 40, including sketches). His letters from Rouen to his wife and friends are full of complaints and doubts: “I’m broken, I can’t take it anymore /…/ My nights are full of nightmares: the cathedral is falling on my head, it seems blue, then pink, then yellow.” “I work so hard that I’m close to a stroke from fatigue.” "I can't think of anything but the cathedral." "I am completely confused and dissatisfied with what I did here. I aimed too high, but it seems I overdid it, ruining what was good. I have not been able to work for four days now and have decided to quit everything and return home. I won’t even packing up my canvases - I don’t want to see them, at least for a while. , the fourth dimension is time.

Rouen Cathedral. Symphony of blue and pink

Facade of Rouen Cathedral

Of course, Monet's interest in the series had various reasons - in particular, we must not forget about his passion for Japanese art and the famous graphic series of Hokusai. Nevertheless, this anecdote accurately reflects the contradiction that Impressionism inevitably encountered in its logical development, and which Monet sought to resolve in the series. The feeling of constant variability of the world, the uniqueness of every moment, characteristic of the impressionists, led to the idea that a static object of painting, independent of the surrounding light-air environment, does not exist at all. And if the artist’s task is to capture a series of light effects, then this is possible not in a single canvas, but in a series. A series of paintings takes on a dramaturgy suggested to the artist by nature itself; the plot chosen by the author dynamically changes and develops over time. That is why it was so important for Monet to arrange the works in a strict sequence: only with such a presentation of the moments captured on each of the canvases was a temporal extension formed.

West façade at noon

Evening. Harmony in brown

When Monet finally considered the series complete and presented it to the public, the times of misunderstanding and ridicule of the Impressionists had already passed. Monet's works - including those from the series preceding the Cathedrals - sold well, and even before the opening of the exhibition, eight Cathedrals were sold. The twenty paintings in the series included in the exhibition were received favorably by fellow artists and critics, although Monet was reproached for being too enthusiastic about technical techniques, and his canvases were compared to “the view through a curtain.”

Rouen Cathedral in the evening

However, Monet’s desire, who saw the series as a single work, not to separate the paintings, did not come true - there was no buyer ready to purchase all twenty canvases, each of which was valued at 15,000 francs. Against the will of the author, “Cathedrals” were sold to various buyers, and today paintings from the series adorn museum and private collections in many countries. Only a hundred years after the end of the series, in May 1994, seventeen “Cathedrals” met briefly in Rouen, at an exhibition in the city's Museum of Fine Arts. But the disparate series “Rouen Cathedral” became one of the most notable artistic phenomena of the late 19th century, ahead of its time and connecting two centuries. "Oh, those cathedrals of his!" - the heroine exclaims enthusiastically
Marcel Proust's novel Sodom and Gomorrah (1921).

West façade and Saint-Romain Tower

Claude Monet. Water lilies. Fragment. 1917-1920

Painting by Jackson Pollock

Monet's later work is usually associated with abstractionism, and above all, works from the grandiose series "Water Lilies": individual fragments of these works could, it seems, be painted by a representative of abstract expressionism - Jackson Pollock or Andre Masson. But in this sense, “Cathedrals” cannot be underestimated. After all, it was in “Cathedrals” that the artist most consistently declared the secondary nature of the object in relation to the actual pictorial effects. Even the names of individual works in the “Cathedrals” series bring us closer to non-objective art: “Brown Harmony”, “Harmony of Blue and Gold”, “Symphony of Gray and Pink”.

Roy Lichtenstein. Rouen Cathedral. 1969

Monet, who introduced the very concept of series into fine art, inspired one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Roy Lichtenstein, a representative of the opposite direction to abstractionism - pop art. Lichtenstein paid tribute to Monet in his own version of the Rouen Cathedral series (1969). By overlaying three of Monet's works with his signature typographic screen and thereby placing them in the context of popular culture, he emphasized the enduring greatness of Monet's painting.

Photo: http://www.tendanceouest.com/print.php?id=77008

Laser show "Paintings by Monet" on the facade of Rouen Cathedral. 2014
photo: http://www.tendanceouest.com/print.php?id=77008

It seems that Monet would have approved of the action that took place in front of the Rouen town hall in June 2010: here, on an area of six hundred square meters, 1,250 people gathered, and each of them held in their hands an enlarged fragment of a painting from the “Rouen Cathedral” series. The "living picture" was photographed and filmed from a helicopter to provide evidence for the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rouen, action "Rouen Cathedral", 2010

Transferring on canvas the variability of light, the variety of atmospheric phenomena and changes in nature in different times years brought Monet world fame and prosperity by 1890. By this time, he began to work on several canvases at the same time, transferring the lighting and state of the view to a certain rather short period time, working on one canvas often for no more than half an hour. In the following days he continued to paint in the same sequence until all the canvases were completed. Among them are the Stog series (1890–1891); Poplars (1890–1892); Rouen Cathedral (1894), Views of the Thames (1899–1904) and Venice (begun 1908).

One of the most famous and impressive series paintings, famous Claude Oscar Monet, called “The Cathedral of Rouen”, the series includes thirty works. To create his paintings, Monet settled in 1892 directly opposite the cathedral and began work on his brainchild. The artist was very fascinated by the play of light on the stone depending on the time of day. Monet tried to capture this “sliding light” that appears and disappears depending on weather conditions and the height of the sun.

The French artist did not focus on the entire cathedral, but only on part of it, the tower of St. Martin and the Alban tower; this fragment serves as a kind of portal to the Gothic cathedral; all the canvases depict this particular part. Monet woke up at dawn and painted until dark.

Monet wrote in one of his letters: “I have been here for a long time, but this does not mean that I will soon finish my Cathedrals.” Alas! I can only say once again that the further I go, the more difficult it becomes for me to convey what I feel. And I tell myself: only a very self-confident person can claim that he has completed his painting. To finish it means to make the picture perfect, but I work so hard, I search and try everything, hardly moving forward and I just get tired..."
Here is what K. Malevich wrote about “Cathedrals” in 1919: “... in fact, all Monet’s efforts were aimed at cultivating the painting that grows on the walls of the cathedral. It is not light or shadow that constitutes his main interest, but painting in the shadow and in the light. Picasso and Monet mined the picturesque like pearls are mined from shells. We don’t need a cathedral, but we need painting, no matter where it comes from, just as we care little about which shell the pearls come from.”

Rouen Cathedral, Sunlight Effect, 1894
Rouen Cathedral, Sunlight Effect, 1894.

Rouen Cathedral, Magic in Blue, 1894

Over time, Monet applied thicker layers of paint to the paintings to emphasize certain details and create the impression that the painting has its own light. The artist complained that the faster the work progressed, the more difficult it was to depict his vision, he also complained that he had nightmares where the cathedral was falling on him and was always changing color, becoming yellow, then pink, then blue.

The main part of the paintings was painted in 1892-1893, the series was finally finalized in 1894. The paintings are named depending on the lighting and time of day, for example: “Cathedral in Rouen at noon”, “Cathedral in Rouen in the Sun”, “Cathedral in Rouen, portal in gray tone."

For the first time, viewers saw paintings of the Rouen Cathedral at an exhibition in 1895, although the line aroused conflicting feelings among critics, it changed the worldview of many French and foreign artists. Almost immediately, 8 paintings were sold to different collectors. Monet wanted to sell the remaining paintings to one collector, but due to the fairly high price (15 thousand francs), the paintings went to different owners.