Waterloo Bridge, London

Waterloo Bridge, London from 1903 is one of the studio-finished versions of a composition Monet studied across multiple visits and atmospheric conditions. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh holds this canvas, which entered American collections through the enthusiasm for Monet's London series that developed in the early twentieth century. By 1903 Monet was completing the London canvases in his Giverny studio from memory and the plein-air studies, adjusting color relationships with the benefit of reflective distance — a fact he carefully concealed from critics who believed all his work was painted directly from nature.

The bridge is rendered in the characteristic cool blue-gray of the series' overcast variants, its arches reflected in the river below with a softness that implies rather than depicts the architectural forms. Monet's handling is assured and final-looking — the result of his studio reworking process rather than direct observation.