Monet returned to London for months to paint the light on the Thames by Parliament. He was enthralled by the changing effects, impressions, of sunshine and fog and rain, of sunrise and midday and sunset. He painted 19 canvases which, together, show a delighted and delightful kaleidoscope.
Six of these Thames paintings were reunited for the ‘Impressionists in London’ exhibition at Tate Britain earlier this year. I sat and sat happily taking in Monet’s presentation of the glorious variety in the ordinary British.
People went by and came. A woman who I had noticed on her own a couple of rooms previously came alongside a man facing the light blue and dark blue midday Thames. She threaded her arm around his waist. They leant into each other. Another woman turned her head as a man entered. He walked up to her; they kissed, lips lingering together. Unusual expressions of affection for London?
A man in his 50s walked up behind a woman with greying hair looking at a Thames shimmering in the mid-afternoon sunlight. He put his arm across her shoulder and she leant into his neck. A younger couple stood in front of a misty, cooler, Thames. They turned towards each other, kissed briefly, before their lips returned for a longer touch.
Four public cuddles seemed extraordinary. Might these paintings emit something romantic?
A few weeks ago I saw the ‘Monet and Architecture’ exhibition at the National Gallery. I had noticed a solitary man in a blue jacket, about 60, like me, matching my pace through the rooms. I sat in front of the two ‘Thames by Parliament’ paintings. He sat on the same bench facing the other way, towards views of Rouen Cathedral. He talked to the woman next to him. Did they know each other?
The woman stood up and walked close to one Thames painting. After a couple of minutes, the man in the jacket came up to the same painting. He put his arm round her waist and whispered in her ear. Surely this was confirmation of the effect of these paintings.
Monet loved London. He loved the light on the Thames. He loved the safety he found as an exile from the bloody turmoil of the Franco Prussian war and the ensuing Paris Commune. He loved the stability of a country with a solid democracy and no revolutions. He loved the flowers, abundant in a land of sunshine and showers.
In exile Monet painted his wife in London. She sits in French mourning clothes, looking wistfully out of the window, unable to pay attention to anything present, not even her book.
Monet’s attention is on his wife’s chair, more central in the painting. An English chair called a ‘chaise longue,’ a play on the French-English connection and maybe an expression of their long wait to return home. The viewer, as intended by the painter, sees mostly the bright flowers of the quintessentially English cloth. The centre of the painting, which indicates its overall atmosphere, is bright. Monet was loving what he saw in England, despite exile.
Monet painted the Thames by Parliament with affection, with care, with love. As people watch, they respond with affection, with care, with love. Art communicates. Alleluia!
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