The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light Claude Monet’s The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light is one of a series of thirty paintings of the Rouen Cathedral that Monet produced from 1892-1894 (Harris, Beth, and Steven Zucker. “Monet, Rouen Cathedral Series.”). The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light was acquired by The J. Paul Getty museum in 2001 and is on display as a part of their permanent exhibit on Impressionism in The Getty Center (“The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light (Getty Museum).” The J. Paul Getty Museum). The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light exemplifies the Impressionist movement by making the representation of light and atmosphere of greater importance than representation of the ostensible
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It is an oil on canvas depiction of the Gothic cathedral of Rouen, a small town in Normandy, France. The painting is in portrait orientation with an intermittent rhythm of repititous verticals. The cathedral is not rendered in a way that is strictly realistic and much detail is lost, but the pointed arches, elaborate towers, and decorative niches are recognizably Gothic. Space and volume in the painting are strictly represented by shifts in hue, such as the shift towards warmer color in the niches and portal, indicating reflected light. The range of value is limited strictly and tends toward the lighter end, but no white is present. Lit surfaces are, once again, represented mostly in shifts of hue, not value. The scale in almost exclusively grand - smaller forms serve to make the massive size of the structure clear to the viewer. There are no sharp edges or contour lines, forms, for the most part, transition in soft, blurry shifts of color. The overall color gamut is split complementary and consists of soft teals, lavenders, cool ultramarines, and orange. The texture is thick and mottled, consisting of many layers of daubed paint. The high profile of the paint is visible from a front view of the …show more content…
The rigidness of linear perspective and strong vertical forms also soften as these elements taper off in gradients or blend together. In addition, limited color and value palettes communicate a softness and subtlety that is at odds with the imposing structure. The composition, an upshot that excludes the ground plane, is dominated by the massive structure, but rather than appear weighty, Rouen Cathedral has a lightness that ties it more strongly to the sky just visible behind it than to the
It is an oil on canvas depiction of the Gothic cathedral of Rouen, a small town in Normandy, France. The painting is in portrait orientation with an intermittent rhythm of repititous verticals. The cathedral is not rendered in a way that is strictly realistic and much detail is lost, but the pointed arches, elaborate towers, and decorative niches are recognizably Gothic. Space and volume in the painting are strictly represented by shifts in hue, such as the shift towards warmer color in the niches and portal, indicating reflected light. The range of value is limited strictly and tends toward the lighter end, but no white is present. Lit surfaces are, once again, represented mostly in shifts of hue, not value. The scale in almost exclusively grand - smaller forms serve to make the massive size of the structure clear to the viewer. There are no sharp edges or contour lines, forms, for the most part, transition in soft, blurry shifts of color. The overall color gamut is split complementary and consists of soft teals, lavenders, cool ultramarines, and orange. The texture is thick and mottled, consisting of many layers of daubed paint. The high profile of the paint is visible from a front view of the …show more content…
The rigidness of linear perspective and strong vertical forms also soften as these elements taper off in gradients or blend together. In addition, limited color and value palettes communicate a softness and subtlety that is at odds with the imposing structure. The composition, an upshot that excludes the ground plane, is dominated by the massive structure, but rather than appear weighty, Rouen Cathedral has a lightness that ties it more strongly to the sky just visible behind it than to the