For the first time in 120 years, The Courtauld Gallery in London will reunite an extraordinary group of Claude Monet’s Impressionist paintings.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), London, Parliament. Sunlight in the fog, 1904, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Photo © Grand Palais RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowsk.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, which runs from 27 September 2024 to 19 January 2025, features Monet’s paintings of London that have never been the subject of a UK exhibition.

Begun by Monet during three visits to the UK capital between 1899 and 1901, the paintings depict well-known landmarks such as Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Waterloo Bridge, Overcast, 1903, oil on canvas, Ordrupgaard, Denmark. Photo: Anders Sune Berg.

The series was unveiled in Paris in 1904 to great critical acclaim and Monet fervently wanted to show it in London the following year but the project fell through. The Courtauld Gallery will therefore realise Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of exhibiting this distinct group of works in London, just 300 metres from the famous Savoy Hotel where many of them were painted.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) is world renowned as the leading figure of French Impressionism, a movement that changed the course of modern art. Less known is the fact that some of his most remarkable paintings were made not in France but in London. They depict views of the Thames, capturing the river and its surrounding architecture as they had never been seen before, full of evocative atmosphere, mysterious light, and radiant colour.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Charing Cross Bridge, The Thames, 1903, oil on canvas, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, Image © Lyon MBA – Photo Alain Basset.

Monet came to London in the wintertime, fascinated by the effects of the London fog, a phenomenon produced by the city’s heavy industrialisation in the 19th century. In London, the fog took on a particular density and a variety of hues that occurred nowhere else. Monet’s paintings are undoubtedly amongst the most significant representations of the Thames ever made and embody the complexity of his practice, 40 years after his debut, as he pushed the Impressionist approach to the extreme.

Monet started the paintings during his three long stays in London in 1899, 1900 and 1901 and finished them in his studio in Giverny, north of Paris. While he eventually painted almost 100 views of the Thames, his most ambitious project to date, the exhibition focuses on the smaller group of 37 paintings that were presented at the unveiling of the series in 1904.

Monet completed these works as a unit specifically for their public display and he considered them the finest representatives of his artistic project. They constituted, in his eyes, the true ‘Thames series’. After the show, the paintings were dispersed, purchased by collectors in France and abroad.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, 1903, oil on canvas, Milwaukee Art Museum. Image Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo: John R. Glembin.

Founded by collectors and philanthropists in 1932, The Courtauld works to advance how people see and understand the visual arts, as an internationally renowned centre for the teaching and research of art history and a major public gallery. The Courtauld Gallery is home to one of the greatest art collections in the UK and is most famous for its iconic Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces – such as Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. It showcases these alongside an internationally renowned collection of works from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through to the present day.

The exhibition The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames will feature 21 paintings, 18 of which were in the 1904 unveiling, in an unprecedented effort to recreate the display that Monet himself put together and the experience he wanted his audience to have seeing these extraordinary works.

If you or your group would like to enjoy a visit to The Courtauld Gallery on a trip to London, perhaps as part of a tailor-made culture tour of England or the United Kingdom, please do contact our friendly team today.