Monet’s work is often praised for its exquisite depiction of light, but there is a slight, albeit significant, inaccuracy to that praise. What distinguishes his paintings from those of Pissarro, Morisot, and other impressionist painters is his belief in the vanishing potential of sunlit air, which Monet saw as the key to understanding the ephemerality of form. We believe that it is. The world is a fascinating mirage. Viewed through the lens of Monet’s paintings, forms, no matter how stony or static, unyielding or inert, are fungible. It fights to survive.
Five years later, seeing an exhibition of Monet’s paintings for the first time in London, the American collector and writer realized that Monet’s enchanting canvases seemed to reverse each stone of material substance and fresh air. Presented attested to the mysteries of the retina. Urban infrastructure is Desmond Fitzgerald explained: “Everything is so foggy that the viewer stares in amazement at what at first appears to be a half-baked painting. But as the eye penetrates into the fog, objects gradually begin to appear. …The illusion is amazing and unlike anything we’ve seen before.” It has been attempted in exactly the same way before, with the Houses of Parliament glowing in the fog in an old rose or purple color. ”
Fitzgerald’s assertion that what Monet captured was at the same time a “fantasy,” something that had never been expressed by an artist before, is telling. Introduced into English in the mid-14th century, the word “fantasy” is associated with “comic” and originally meant a jeering act that mocked deception. Could it be that Monet’s enchanting depictions of the Thames differ so markedly from those of earlier artists because he did not see his subjects as they actually appeared? Is it a glorious lie?
“There was a light in the air.”
Monet was the first to confess that he had to create an Insta filter to make London a suitable subject for him to tackle. “London would not be a beautiful city without the fog. It gives London a grand expanse; its regular, gigantic blocks become magnificent in their mysterious cloak. ” he said. When Monet drew the curtains of his hotel room and discovered the crisp, clean light of a fog-free morning, it was clear that he was in a state of sheer panic. In a letter written in March 1900, he wrote to his wife: “When I woke up I was horrified to see there was no fog, not even a hint of fog. I was devastated and had already ruined all the canvas.” “I saw it turn out to be,” he confessed. His sense of relief when “the fire was lit little by little and the smoke and fog returned” only confirms his suspicion that the London location was almost incidental to his purpose. What he was actually compiling was not a study of cities, but Experiments in Optics, a pioneering treatise on the undiscovered properties of light itself.
