Charing Cross Bridge

Charing Cross Bridge from 1900 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art inaugurates Monet's serial investigation of the Victorian railway viaduct — his earliest canvas of this subject from the opening London campaign of 1899–1900. Unlike the ancient stone dignity of Waterloo Bridge or the Gothic nationalism of the Parliament buildings, Charing Cross was an entirely Victorian industrial structure, its cast iron spans designed for function rather than beauty, its trains emitting the steam that contributed most directly to the atmospheric dissolution Monet sought in the London subjects. The Indianapolis Museum of Art, whose French Impressionist collection includes important canvases across the movement's development, holds this early Charing Cross canvas as a document of the series' beginning — before Monet had fully established his range of atmospheric conditions for this particular motif. The comparison between this 1900 opening investigation and the later fog and sunrise variants shows the progressive deepening and diversification of his atmospheric program across the three London visits.

The iron bridge's horizontal span is broken by steam clouds rising from locomotives, which Monet uses as devices for further dissolving the boundary between solid structure and atmospheric vapour. The composition is organized around warm-cool contrasts — the steamy pinks and oranges of train emissions against the cool blues and greens of the Thames.