Monet: Rouen Cathedral Series

Rouen Cathedral is an extensive series of 33 paintings by Claude Monet, which were executed between 1892 and 1894. The paintings show the Rouen Cathedral in different light situations and sometimes with slight positioning variations. The Rouen Cathedral paintings are hailed as one of the highlights in Monet’s work.

All of the 33 paintings show Rouen Cathedral. In 30 of them Monet painted the cathedral’s front; three paintings show small sections of the cathedral. The Gothic facade is shown in an extreme close-up, though it is no realistic or detailed representation of the building’s architecture. The essential elements of the paintings are rather the reproduction of the buildings interaction with different shades of light and weather conditions.

Claude Monet painted the first versions of Rouen Cathedral from a direct frontal view. The spotlight moved over time more and more to the right, as Monet changed his position. Overall, there are five different perspectives from which the paintings were executed.

Claude Monet executed most paintings of the Rouen Cathedral series during 1892/1893 in Rouen but completed many of them 1894 in Giverny. Hence, most works are signed and dated with 1894. Monet decided for the motif during a trip in 1892 and immediately started to paint the Cathedral from a vacant apartment. He could not complete this first painting as he had to return urgently to Giverny. When he arrived back to Rouen, his apartment was no longer availale and he had to choose a new location.

However, Rouen Cathedral as a motif created Monet also some headaches. He had nightmares and even destroyed some canvases. In mid-April he returned to Giverny, to recover from his efforts and doubted the quality of his cathedral paintings. The year after, Monet returned to Rouen and dedicated himself again to the subject. After he finished his work in Rouen, he completed the paintings in his studio in Giverny, in February 1894.
Claude Monet hold the Rouen Cathedral paintings back for a while cathedral for some time before he reluctantly showed them to the art dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Bernheim. Nevertheless, Monet was well aware of the artistic value artistic of the Cathedral paintings and claimed 15,000 Francs for them. Durand-Ruel found this price to be excessive and after some discussions and waiting Monet lowered his expectations to 12,000 francs.

The paintings of the Rouen Cathedral series are now in located in various museums and collections all over the world.