Personally, I prefer the Haystacks to the Roeun Cathedral series. However, they are opposedly different if viewed in the urban vs. agricultural context — so perhaps the comparison is irrelevant. Still, it seems that Monet’s color effects agree better with wide and open landscapes than with elaborate Gothic architecture. In the Cathedrals there’s a sense of hyper tension, ensuing from overabundance of detail coupled with the usual palette swamping. In a way, there is a thematic imbalance between the painter’s style and subject matter in the Rouen Cathedral series. Back to the haystacks, I think that in these series the artist may have found the perfect combination of subject and style; they feed off each other in curious ways, and I will try to build an argument expounding this interaction.
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Claude Monet produced thirty paintings of the Rouen Cathedral.
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In most of them, the Gothic church is shown from the same angle; it is the colors that were the main subject of variation. By using unpredictable, sometimes improbable palette combinations — or “harmonies” — as the artist called them, Monet strove to capture the structure in different light and weather effects, some of which, I have to say, seem just as the colors, improbable and unpredictable. I certainly do not wish to contend Monet’s artistic logic, because impressionism has its own rules, and it was the man himself who invented them. Still, for someone uninitiated, there is considerable surprise involved, and my goal here will be to try and outline its origins from a fresh perspective.
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