Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect

Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect is one of approximately forty canvases Monet devoted to the Thames riverscape during his three London campaigns of 1899–1901, staying at the Savoy Hotel whose windows looked directly onto Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament in the distance. London's fog and coal-smoke atmosphere fascinated Monet as an even more extreme example of the atmospheric dissolution he had been pursuing since his early Seine river paintings. He characteristically painted several canvases simultaneously, working on each in succession as light conditions shifted.

The bridge's grey stone form dissolves in the London atmosphere, emerging as a suggestion of arches through the haze. The river surface reflects the warm ochre and pink of sunlight filtered through coal-smoke fog. Monet's brushwork here is looser and more diffuse than his Giverny garden work, appropriate to subjects that barely maintain physical solidity.