Monet & Architecture — National Gallery, London
Winner of the Art Fund Student Writing Competition 2018
For all of 16 weeks this year, the basement of the National Gallery will be adorned by over 70 of Claude Monet’s paintings. This masterfully curated temporary exhibition, divided temporally and thematically into seven rooms, showcases works of Monet with (an) architectural element(s).
As one weaves through the rooms travelling with Monet to French and Dutch villages, Mediterranean sun-soaked towns, Venetian monuments, and the cityscapes of London and Paris, a gradually modernising world is reflected. While there are insightful historical and artistic observations to be drawn, I spent longest contemplating some of his earlier work categorised “The Village and The Picturesque”.
The physicality of Monet’s work is humbling — I could feel the wind in The Customs Officer’s Cottage. I was most enamoured by two winter-themed paintings which were not placed together in the exhibition — Vétheuil in Winter and Snow Effect at Giverny. How structures are made to stand out with such little diversity of colour is astonishing — Snow is the building material, and paint is the medium of snow for Monet the Architect.
Up close, the brushstrokes blend together, all whites and blues and frost. Take a few steps back, however, and the same picture now takes shape and makes sense. To me, it felt analogous to stepping away from perfecting the details to place my PhD work in a broader context in order to assess how everything fits together and where the gaps are, without diminishing the value of the investment in detail — The individual brushstrokes combine to create a breath-taking painting.
And after all, is not the purpose of art to transcend space and time, and spill into our lives?
