The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light

Claude Monet

1894

Oil on canvas, Oil, Canvas

J. Paul Getty Museum

An impressionistic painting depicts the facade of a Gothic cathedral bathed in soft morning light. The architecture is rendered with loose brushstrokes, emphasizing the play of light and shadow. An impressionistic painting depicts the facade of a Gothic cathedral bathed in soft morning light. The architecture is rendered with loose brushstrokes, emphasizing the play of light and shadow. "Everything changes, even stone." Claude Monet wrote these words in a letter and vividly demonstrated them in paint, conveying a wondrous combination of permanence and mutability as the sun daily transformed the facade of Rouen Cathedral. Extending the building's encrusted stone surface to the richly varied impasto surface of his painting, he portrayed the cathedral perpetually re-emerging in the suffused light of early morning. Monet create