Portal of Rouen Cathedral Morning Light by Monet Poster

Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light by Claude Monet, oil on canvas 1894, is a landscape painting from the artist’s most famous series, the 26 views of Rouen Cathedral, which captured the façade of the famous church in differing conditions of light, time of day, season, and atmosphere. Filling the picture plane of the tall, vertical canvas, the soaring church is bathed in the cool blue shadow tones, the rays of the rising sun beginning to color the sky with a warm glow, while yellow and orange light begins to highlight the lofty spires, arches and tower of the massive Gothic construction. Painted in quickly applied brushstrokes that capture the light, color and atmosphere of a fleeting a moment in time, the picture constructs a luminous image that epitomizes the ideas and technique of the Impressionist painters. Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) was a founder and chief driving force behind the French Impressionist school of painting. Born in Paris, Monet studied with Eugene Boudin, who taught the basics of oil painting and plein-air (open air) easel painting, and later with painter Charles Gleyre, eventually befriending fellow Impressionists Manet, Renoir, Bazille and others. Rejected by the Paris Salon and other venues of the 19th century academic establishment, the Impressionists painted directly from nature, capturing fleeting moments in time, in bright, broken color and small, rapid brushstrokes. Monet lived and studied in London and Holland, producing many paintings, until the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, where his painting Impression: Sunrise gained notoriety and earned the group its famous moniker. Following the death of his child and of his first wife Camille, Monet settled in Giverny, where increasing success allowed him to establish a home and studio surrounded by elaborate gardens. Monet painted many landscapes, including garden scenes and his famous Cathedral series, with increasing concerns for light, color and atmosphere, with a concern for color and shapes that in his older age bordered on a kind of abstraction, making him one of the most beloved painters of the modern era.