Location📍 National Gallery of Art → West Building Main Floor, Gallery M85

The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil

Painted in 1894, Rouen Cathedral, West Façade captures the soaring exterior of the cathedral, which Claude Monet painted while renting rooms across from it in Rouen between 1892 and 1893. The façade is rendered with visible dabs and strokes of azure blue, peach, lavender purple, and camel brown, creating a blurred appearance as if seen in a rippling puddle. The central composition features a rectangular door set within nested, pointed arches, leading to a tall, triangular gable that overlaps a dark rose window. Claude Monet’s series paintings, including this one, marked a shift from traditional Impressionism; he extensively reworked these canvases in the studio to prioritize the effects of light, color, and atmosphere—the "enveloppe"—over the motif itself. Claude Monet signed and dated the painting in the lower left: “Claude Monet 94.”