Page 46 - Studio International - March 1973

The Fanfare for Europe junketings may not
London as a subject have been notable for cultural relevance, but out
of them did come one memorable event.
of Monet's vision Stranded on the top floor of the Hayward

Gallery, a whale among minnows, was to be
found a sizeable chunk of Monet's last-but-one
major series, packaged along with some
`THE IMPRESSIONISTS IN LONDON' IS AT THE HAYWARD GALLERY UNTIL I I MARCH Pissarros, Sisleys and others in a neatly
opportunistic and pleasurable enough exhibition
called 'The Impressionists in London'. About a
hundred paintings in Monet's 1899-1901 London
series are known, of which twenty-five were on
show. The proportion may not seem particularly
generous (it had proved impossible to
reassemble even thirty-seven, as in Monet's
own 1904 selection), but it is still more than have
ever been hung together since that first
exhibition, and as far as I can gather, one of the
largest groups from any Monet series to be
assembled since his lifetime. The significance,
let alone the experience, of such an occasion
needs trumpeting, particularly in view of the
torpidly conventional salute it received from
most reviewers.
A Monet series is essentially not just another
example of delectable impressionist clarity-of-
eye, somewhat obsessively extended to cover
every observable aspect of a single motif. It is
the sum of its parts, with a grander and more
definable meaning when considered as a whole
than when sampled arbitrarily in fragments. The
London series would hardly have been planned
for more than twenty years and worked on for
another six merely for the picturesque
advantages offered by two London bridges and a
group of neo-Gothic buildings. Each of the
major series is a sustained exploration of one
aspect or another of the perennial paradox-cum-
metaphor whereby the substance of paint stands
for the substance of the material world. Only in
the weakest of them, the Venice series, was the
motive (as distinct from the motif) perhaps little
more than a romantic or sentimental desire to
sample the inspirational qualities of a famous
locale. In the others, it is more rigorous and
more specific. The Haystacks and the Poplars,
for example, explore presentational problems of
organizing an image on canvas rather than
striking a happy mise-en-page for a landscape
view — presumably with the example of
Japanese prints in mind. The Haystacks tackle,
with stunning boldness, the idea of a canvas
centred on one isolated shape; the Poplars
concentrate on a pattern of trees against sky
designed to emphasize a balance of figure/ground
relationships.
But the Rouen Cathedral series, the London
(Above) series and the Waterlines in its various
Hyde Park, London 1871
41 x 74 cm permutations are about something more. If
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, paint is to stand for the material world, what
Providence
does the material world itself consist of ? The
answer is obviously not, even for Monet, just
(Below) light. In the Rouen series, we know that the
Charing Cross Bridge 1903 encrusted paint-texture was a conscious
73 x 100 cm simulation of stone. But Monet would have
St Louis Art Museum
painted differently (perhaps more like
Cezanne ?) if his eye had convinced him that
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