Claude Monet
French, 1840-1926
The Portal of Rouen Cathedral inMorning Light, 1894
Oil on canvas
Between 1892 and 1894, Monet turned away from his usual landscape subjects and painted thirty views of Rouen Cathedral with a methodical intensity that was unparalleled in his career. For Monet, the Gothic monument was less important as a religious symbol than as a permanent, richly textured surface on which light and atmosphere could play with infinite and colorful variation.
