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Lesson Plans—Works of Art
Object Descriptions and Suggested Discussion Questions

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) Charing Cross Bridge (“Reflections on the Thames”), 1901–4 Oil on canvas The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Helen and Abram Eisenberg Collection BMA 1945.94

Charing Cross Bridge is one of a series of canvases Claude Monet painted in London from the window of his room at the Hotel Savoy between 1899 and 1901. Looking out of his hotel window, Monet was intrigued by the effects of atmosphere and light on the Thames and the London landmarks that dot its banks. He wrote:

The fog in London assumes all sorts of colors…My practiced eye has found that objects change in appearance more and quicker in London fog than in any other atmosphere, and the difficulty is to get every change down on canvas.

In this atmospheric painting, Charing Cross Bridge stands out as the strongest structure. Dense fog nearly obscures two more distant bridges and the London Clocktower. The location of the sun almost directly overhead suggests it must be late morning or early afternoon. Yellow reflections of sunlight dance on the cool, blue-violet water. A few strokes of dark paint give form to a small boat and its passengers making their way slowly up the river.

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), The Cliff, Étretat, Sunset, 1883, oil on canvas, North Carolina Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1967 (67.24.1) The dramatic cliffs of the French resort Étretat are the subject for this canvas, which is one of at least 18 views of the famous "Elephant and the Needle" rock formation the artist painted in 1883. Matisse’s The Pierced Rock (1920), on view in the exhibition, depicts this shoreline as well. Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists, 1897, oil on canvas, North Carolina Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Sarah Graham Kenan Foundation and the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1975 (75.24.1) While working on this painting, part of a series, Monet used a small boat as a floating studio so he could paint on the Seine as morning light broke through the fog in his village of Giverny. Frederick Carl Frieseke (American, 1874–1939, active in France from 1898), The Garden Parasol, 1910, oil on canvas, North Carolina Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 1973 (73.1.4) Like Monet, his neighbor in Giverny, Frieseke was interested in representing the colorful effects of the fall of light on the surfaces around him.

During these three years, Monet worked on several canvases at once from his perch. The late-19th-century introduction of paint in tubes and portable easels freed artists from the confines of their studios and allowed them to work in other locations. Monet did much of his painting outside, or en plein air. As the day progressed, he would move from one painting to another, documenting the ever-changing location of the sun and its colorful effects on the landscape. The quick strokes and dabs of color in Monet’s paintings show the artist’s desire to capture the fleeting effects of light and color on his chosen subject. Critics called this loose style impressionism, a word they took from the title of Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise (1873). It is said he worked on his London canvases up to 20 or 30 times, attempting to capture the Thames at different hours, seasons and weather conditions. Once he recorded his impressions down on canvas, he took the paintings back to his studio in Giverny, France, and reworked them.

Suggested Discussion Questions

• What time of day do you think it is? How do you know?
• Describe the weather conditions in this painting. How does the artist create these atmospheric effects?
• How would the colors in this painting be different if Monet had painted it at sunset?