BROOKLYN, N.Y.- Monet’s London: Artists’ Reflections on the Thames, 1859–1914 will present selections from Claude Monet’s series of London paintings, created between 1899 and 1904, alongside artworks by his contemporaries, including paintings, prints, watercolors, drawings, and photographs by European and American artists. The exhibition will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from May 27 through September 4, 2005. Comprising some 140 works on loan from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, the exhibition addresses a range of modernist styles, including Impressionism, pointillism, and Fauvism as well as including topographical and academic views of the Thames. In addition to eleven paintings, a pastel, and a sketchbook by Monet, there will be works by other European artists such as Camille Pissarro, James Tissot, André Derain, and Charles-François Daubigny, as well as the Americans James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, and Childe Hassam.

Whistler was among the first of the artists to be captivated by the river and his Thames Set became one of the most influential series of prints of the period, inspiring other artists, including Monet. Claude Monet (1840–1926) was one of a number of artists experimenting with new approaches to painting who were drawn to the industrialized city of London, with its bustling riverfront, frequently shrouded in nearly impenetrable fog. Monet began his series of views along the Thames in the fall of 1899, returning in 1900 and 1901 to continue to capture images of landscapes in a very different light than that to which he had been accustomed.

Many of Monet’s London views were painted from his lodgings at the Savoy Hotel and from across the river at St. Thomas’s Hospital, where he had expansive views of the Thames. There he became fascinated by the effects created by the atmospheric conditions—the fog, mist, and reflections on the water. Unable to complete all of his paintings while in London, he continued to work on them after he returned to Giverny, exhibiting them as a group in 1904. Among the works on view will be the Monet’s Houses of Parliament from the Brooklyn Museum; Daubigny’s St. Paul’s from the Surrey Side, 1873; Derain’s London Bridge; Homer’s The Houses of Parliament; Pissarro’s Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1890; Tissot’s The Thames; and Whistler’s The Last of Old Westminster, 1842.

The exhibition will also include a number of fascinating contemporaneous photographs from the early years of experimentation in the medium, including images by Roger Fenton and Francis Frith, among others, as well as photogravures by Alvin Langdon Coburn. Also included are works by such painter-printmakers as Félix Buhot, Henri Guérard, and Joseph Pennell, as well as vintage maps, guidebooks, and other ephemera. Monet’s London: Artists’ Reflections on the Thames, 1859–1914 is organized and circulated by The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida and has received indemnification from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. British Airways is the official airline of the exhibition. The exhibition in Brooklyn is made possible, in part, through the generosity of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray & Cary US LLP. Additional generous support is provided by Sweet ‘N Low and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is coordinated by Elizabeth A. Easton Ph.D., Curator and Chair, Department of European Painting and Sculpture. The exhibition was on view at the MFA in Florida January 16–April 24, 2005. Following the Brooklyn showing, it will be on view at The Baltimore Museum of Art October 2–December 31, 2005.