compiled by Jane Stroud
•Claude Monet La Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Fête du 30 Juin, 1878, oil on canvas, 311⁄2 x 193⁄4in (80 x 50cm)
Monet & Architecture at the National Gallery, London this spring focuses for the first time on Monet’s portrayal of architecture within his paintings. Featuring more than 75 paintings, the exhibition spans his career, from the mid-1860s to 1912. Many of the works on show come from private collections around the world, and have rarely been seen in public before. The exhibition is divided into three sections: The Village and the Picturesque, The City and the Modern, and The Monument and the Mysterious, each of which explores Monet’s work through new eyes revealing how Monet used architecture not only to record locations or occasions, such as the flag-filled street in Paris (right) to celebrate a national holiday, but also as a device to suggest scale, impact complementary colour or add texture. Interviewed in 1895 Monet described how he used the characteristics of buildings as a theatre of light: ‘Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat…I want to paint the air that surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat – the beauty of the light in which they exist.’ Many of Monet’s ‘series’ paintings also feature, including five Dutch pictures, ten from Argenteuil and the Parisian suburbs, seven Rouen Cathedrals, eight paintings from London and nine Venice canvases. The National Gallery has published a book to accompany the exhibition. Monet & Architecture by Richard