Worcester Art Museum Exhibit to Explore Monet’s Waterloo Bridge Painting
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
GoLocalWorcester Lifestyle Team
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| Worcester Art Museum exhibit to explore Monet's Waterloo Bridge painting |
“The Worcester Art Museum has always had a hunger for the new, as is reflected in the fact that the Museum purchased its Waterloo Bridge painting in 1910, just a few years after Monet finished it. We are excited to be able to present our great painting in an exhibition that engages viewers in appreciating Monet’s skill at capturing a sense of atmosphere, while also sharing new insights into his technique,” said Matthias Waschek, C. Jean and Myles McDonough Director of the Worcester Art Museum.
The exhibit is on display from January 25 through April 28.
About the Exhibit
The exhibition will examine how these ephemeral elements impacted his painting process, from his choice of palette to his brushstrokes.
Painted during Monet’s extended visits to London in 1899, 1900, and 1901, the Waterloo Bridge series exemplifies the spirit of Monet’s Impressionistic style as well as iconic associations with turn-of-the-century London, from the fog-bound landscape to the ongoing industrialization of the City.
“While much attention has been paid to analyzing Monet’s French series, such as the Water Lilies and Grainstacks, his London works are finally receiving the renewed critical focus they deserve. The turn-of-the-twentieth-century was a transformative time in London’s growth, and Monet’s paintings reflect this through years of analyzing the same architectural sites. The Waterloo Bridges are unique among the three London series in that they highlight the industrial, public face of the city, a modern shift for an artist so closely associated with idyllic landscapes. This exhibition is a terrific opportunity for visitors to have an intensive, intimate viewing experience of a leading Impressionist painter, through a focused lens that encourages comparisons across these nine related works,” said the exhibition’s curator, Nancy Kathryn Burns, the Museum’s Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
In addition to the nine paintings, all from North American collections and including the Worcester Art Museum’s own 1903 work, the exhibition will include extensive new information about Monet's process, based on recent technical analyses of the paintings.
Monet’s Waterloo Bridge
Monet's Waterloo Bridge is structured to examine two major themes.
The first is Monet’s vision, the approach he took as a painter working to capture what he saw and how he translated that vision into the innovative serial approach for which he is best known.
The second theme looks at the artist’s process, including his all-over painting style, bold palette and the results of newly conducted conservation research on several of the paintings in the exhibition.
Additionally, the works will be complemented by a series of interactives that let visitors explore in more detail aspects of Monet’s process drawn from the research, including how he started each of his canvases, to the approach he took blending paint colors to achieve a desired visual effect.
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