This bridge barely holds together as a solid shape. Monet was more interested in the fog swallowing it than in the ironwork itself.
What you're looking at
Monet painted this view of Charing Cross Bridge in 1901, its iron framework rendered as a spare, almost skeletal structure dissolving into river fog, with the ghostly silhouette of the Houses of Parliament rising faintly in the haze behind it. Cool purples and blues dominate the color, giving the whole scene an underwater, dreamlike softness.
Nearly a hundred paintings from one hotel window
Beginning in September 1899, Monet made almost 100 paintings of the river Thames, working from just three fixed viewpoints across the whole project: Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, both painted from his room at the Savoy Hotel, and the Houses of Parliament, painted from a terrace at St Thomas's Hospital across the river. This painting is one of that huge series, focused on the bridge closest to his hotel window.
Monet had collected Japanese woodblock prints for years, and the bridge's spare, geometric iron framework, reduced here to simple straight lines against a soft, atmospheric background, echoes the flattened, graphic compositions of those prints. The painting is now held by the Art Institute of Chicago.
One detail to look for
Look above the bridge for the faint, ghostly silhouette of the Houses of Parliament, barely distinguishable from the fog itself. Monet was painting nearly a hundred variations of this same general view, and each one captures a slightly different density of London haze.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original, 65.0 x 92.2 cm. Shop the canvas print.