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An arched bridge faintly materializes in a haze of soft turquoise blue and mint green in this horizontal landscape painting. The bridge has four arches under a flat deck, and it extends off each side of the canvas. Running across the middle of the composition, it angles slightly away from us to our right. The bridge is painted in strokes of slate blue and muted lavender purple, with darker shades on the shadowed undersides of the arches. Touches of rose pink and white along the deck suggest lights moving across the bridge. The water below is sky blue and seafoam green. A few vertical swipes of teal blue in the background suggest towers or tall buildings in the distance on the opposite shore. The sky above is painted with long strokes of lime green and robin’s egg blue. The artist signed the painting with cobalt blue in the lower right corner, “Claude Monet.”

Claude Monet

Waterloo Bridge, London, at Dusk, 1904

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 80

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 65.7 × 101.6 cm (25 7/8 × 40 in.)

framed: 84.46 × 120.02 × 9.53 cm (33 1/4 × 47 1/4 × 3 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

1983.1.27

Artists / Makers

Claude Monet (artist) French, 1840 - 1926

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower right: Claude Monet

Provenance

Purchased from the artist December 1920 by (Durand-Ruel, Paris) and (Bernheim-Jeune, Paris); (Durand-Ruel, New York) by 1922 until at least 1926.[1] (Sam Salz, Inc., New York); sold 2 November 1960 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA.

[1]See Wildenstein, Daniel, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné, 1996, vol. III: no. 1564 and also Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the Twentieth Century, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1998, no. 15 and p. 130, regarding the early history of this painting. Lent by Durand-Ruel, New York, to a 1926 exhibition in Toronto.

Associated Names

Bernheim-Jeune
Durand-Ruel et Cie
Mellon, Paul
Salz, Sam

Exhibition History

1926: Inaugural Exhibition, The Art Gallery of Toronto, 1926, no. 82

1966: French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 91, repro

1986: Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist

1988: Monet in London, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1988-1989, no. 9, repro.

1996: Claude Monet, Österreichische Galerie, Vienna, 1996, no. 71, repro., as Waterloo Bridge, Daybreak.

1996: Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 172-173, color repro.

1997: Loan for display with permanent collection, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, England, 1997.

1998: Monet in the 20th Century, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1998-1999, no. 15, repro.

2001: Monets Vermächtnis Serie - Ordnung und Obsession [Monet's Legacy. Series - Order and Obsession], Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 2001-2002, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2003: Aux origines de l'abstraction, 1800-1914, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2003-2004, no. 14, repro.

2004: Claude Monet, A Hymn to Light: Selected Works from the 1870s and 1890s, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum; Nara Prefectural Museum of Art, 2004, no cat.

2018: Monet's Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; Worcester Art Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2018-2019 (shown only in Rochester and Worcester), no. 7, repro.

Bibliography

1974: Wildenstein, Daniel. Claude Monet: biographie et catalogue raisonné. 5 vols. Lausanne Paris, 1974-1991: no. 1564.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 282, repro.

2000: Kirsh, Andrea, and Rustin S. Levenson. Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Materials and Meaning in the Fine Arts 1. New Haven, 2000: 225-226, color fig. 244.