Artists in exile: London landmarks through French eyes

(30 Oct 2017) LEADIN:
A new exhibit at Tate Britain gallery is showing famous London landmarks through French eyes.
'Impressionists in London, French Artists in Exile' charts the works of French artists who sought refuge in Britain during the Franco-Prussian War.
STORYLINE:
While one of London's most famous landmarks remains cloaked in scaffolding, a new exhibit at the British capital's Tate Britain gallery is exploring another moment in its history.
'Impressionists in London, French Artists in Exile' charts the works of French artists who sought refuge in Britain during the Franco-Prussian War.
It includes over 100 works by artists including Claude Monet, James Tissot and Camille Pissarro.
"In 1870 and 1871, there was a war called the Franco-Prussian War followed by the Paris Commune, which was effectively a civil war in Paris," explains the exhibit's curator Caroline Corbeau-Parsons.
"Most of the city was left in (rubble) and Monet and Pissarro came to London, Monet to avoid conscription and Pissarro because his house was turned into a stable by the occupying forces."
The French artists painted examples of British culture and social life, notably different to Paris cafe culture.
While walking on the grass was strictly prohibited in French gardens, the artists discovered people freely enjoying London parks, such as Kew Gardens.
They also painted bunting-fringed regattas along the River Thames.
"The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were more interested in depicting the beautiful sonnets and paragraphs from Shakespeare, for example. So, very beautiful, highly-finished images," explains art critic Estelle Lovatt.
"And then the impressionists came with their crash, bang, wallop sort of application, where it was very, very quick, before the scene in front of them changed.
"In Paris, they'd be concentrating on the nightclubs and the cafes and the clubs.
"And when they came here, they found actually that they just wanted to draw the beautiful architecture, like around Westminster and St. Paul's and Big Ben, but also the mist that surrounded that beauty, because they were interested in colour and how colour changed what they were looking at.
"And fogs went from pea green to dark violet in colour and they found that so beautiful."
The largest section of the exhibit is dedicated to the artists' representations of the River Thames.
It includes six paintings from Claude Monet's Houses of Parliament series.
Monet used the towering building and its neighbouring river to experiment with fog's changing colour and delicate sunlight breaking through clouds down onto the river below.
"What Monet and Pissarro brought was a sort of a naturalist view of London," says Corbeau-Parsons.
"And Monet complained about Victorian artists and the fact they painted London brick by brick and he said; 'This is not possible.'
"And as early as 1870, he tried to paint the fog on the Thames and it was a real challenge for all artists, which is probably why the motif of the Houses of Parliament in the fog became such a central motif in French art.
For three consecutive winters - 1899 to 1901 - Monet stayed at the Savoy Hotel and dedicated himself to his Thames series.
But it was only in 1900 that he turned his attention to the Houses of Parliament, painting from a terrace in St. Thomas' Hospital.
He worked on the canvases simultaneously in his studio until 1904, when they were eventually delivered to a Paris art gallery for exhibition.
It became his most successful exhibition to date.
'The EY Exhibition: Impressionists in London, French Artists in Exile (1870-1904)' runs 2 November - 29 April 2018.

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