LONDON: Claude Monet was enchanted by the mysterious light generated by London’s famous “smog”, and the city he loved is now hosting a new exhibition recognising his strange fascination with the industrial pollution.

“Monet and London. Views of the Thames” opening Friday will be the first time his paintings of the Houses of Parliament and the River Thames go on show in the city, as he had wished 120 years ago.

The French Impressionist painter made three visits to London, for several months at a time, between 1899 and 1901. The city was then the most populated city in the world and a major industrial centre, its air often thick with pollution.

He stayed in the Savoy Hotel, from where he had a breathtaking view of the Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges.

To paint the Palace of Westminster — the UK parliament — he crossed the river and set up his easel on a terrace of St Thomas’ Hospital, which is still in use today. “Every day, I find London more beautiful to paint,” the artist wrote to his stepdaughter in 1900.

In a letter to his wife, he wrote of the ever-changing weather and its transformative effects on the Thames. “You wouldn’t believe the amazing effects I have seen in the nearly two months that I have been constantly looking at the River Thames,” he wrote.

He told a US journalist in 1901 that “London is the more interesting that it is harder to paint. The fog assumes all sorts of colours; there are black, brown, yellow, green, purple fogs,” he added.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2024