Affiches Cathedral in Rouen Portal Grey Weather by Monet

Cathedral in Rouen: The Portal, Grey Weather by Claude Monet, oil on canvas 1892, is one of the artist’s most famous series of paintings, the 26 views of Rouen Cathedral painted in differing conditions of natural light, color, weather, seasons and time of day. The massive stone church fills the picture plane with its arches, round rose stained glass window, towers and buttresses, yet the depiction of color, light and atmosphere creates an image of fleeting lightness and luminosity. Painted quickly in small brushstrokes of color, the picture embodies the concerns of the Impressionist painters and remains one of the most popular examples of French Impressionism to this day. 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.