Monet in England

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from war in France, while by the second he had become so commercially successful that he stayed at the Savoy Hotel. There, from his balcony, he began a series of almost a hundred paintings that captured the essence of this dynamic city at that time, with fog and smoke almost obscuring the bridges, boats and Houses of Parliament. The pollution was terrible for health but the diffraction through the sooty droplets offered an ever-changing light that captivated Monet, and he was to paint the Thames more than he did his water lilies or haystacks or Rouen Cathedral. On his return to France, Monet appeared to have a new confidence to explore an art that was more abstract than impressionist.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Karen Serres No other episodes
  Senior Curator of Paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, London
• Frances Fowle 2 episodes
  Professor of Nineteenth-Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland
• Jackie Wullschlager No other episodes
  Chief Art Critic for the Financial Times

Reading list

• Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile 1870-1904
  Caroline Corbeau Parsons (Tate Publishing, 2017) Google Books →
• Monet and French Landscape: Vetheuil and Normandy
  Frances Fowle (National Galleries of Scotland, 2007) Google Books →
• Monet
  Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge (Harry N. Abrams, 1983) Google Books →
• Monet in the '90s: The Series Paintings
  Paul Hayes Tucker (Yale University Press, 1990) Google Books →
• Monet in the 20th Century
  Paul Hayes Tucker (Yale University Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Turner, Whistler, Monet
  Katharine A. Lochnan (Tate Publishing, 2005) Google Books →
• Monet and the Thames: Paintings and Modern Views of Monet's London
  Nicholas Reed (Lilburne Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Monet in London
  Grace Seiberling (High Museum of Art, 1988) Google Books →
• Monet and London: Views of the Thames
  Karen Serres, Frances Fowle and Jennifer A. Thompson (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2024)
• Monet: A Retrospective
  Charles Stuckey (Random House, 1985) Google Books →
• Monet: The Triumph of Impressionism
  Daniel Wildenstein (Taschen, 2022) Google Books →
• Monet: The Restless Vision
  Jackie Wullschlager (Allen Lane, 2023) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0020j9z

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020j9z

Auto-category: 759.4 (French painters, painting in 19th century)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 1899 in London, Claude Monet looked out on the Thames from his hotel balcony in the Savoy Hotel and began a series of almost a hundred paintings that captured the essence of this dynamic city in which fog almost obscured the bridges, boats and parliament.