Landmark Claude Monet exhibition coming to London early next year Landmark Claude Monet exhibition coming to London early next year

Monet: Painting Time brings the work of one of the greatest impressionist painters to Tate Modern in London offering gallery goers the change to revisit his life and legacy through the lens of time, both its fast pace, and the artist’s task of capturing a specific moment.

On show from 25 February to 27 June 2027, the exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to revisit Monet’s beloved Giverny and Rouen in Normandy, along with Paris and London, via his artworks which so often reference nature.

Spanning 60 years of Monet’s career from the 1870s to the 1920s, the exhibition will focus on his exploration of the passing of time as one of the defining and most profoundly beautiful achievements of modern painting. Featuring highlights from Monet’s most famous series such as Cathedrale de Rouen, effet de soleil, fin de journee 1892, and rarely exhibited loans from private collections including Branch of the Seine near Giverny (Sunrise) 1897, the exhibition will trace Monet’s creation of a new style of painting: capturing fleeting moments amid the accelerating pace of modern life, something we all do so often now via our phone cameras and social media.

During a sneak preview, Katherine Wood, Acting Director, Tate Modern, told Wanderlust, “We think we know Monet, but do we really look anymore? This exhibition aims to look anew at the artist’s sensitivity towards the time he lived through and its shifting technology, somewhat relevant to our current rapid shifts in technology where we are all experiencing an acceleration of time.”

Monet’s career coincided with a dramatic shift in society’s perception of time. The rise of railways in the 1860s brought about a major challenge – the need for standardised time zones – which drastically altered the rhythm of everyday life. Monet responded directly to this accelerating pace of modernity, his rapid brushstrokes capturing the fleeting effects of light and the atmosphere of the city.

Intrigued by the changing industrial landscape, he worked intensively to record Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare in early 1877, with works such as Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare capturing this symbol of technological progress at a momentary pause. The work will be shown at Tate Modern alongside his later views of London, including Waterloo Bridge, London, at Dusk 1904 and Charing Cross Bridge, Smoke in Fog, Impression 1902, these works revealing how Monet rose to the challenge of painting the modern world.

As Curator, International Art at Tate, Juliet Bingham says, “Themed around time, this exhibition proposes slow looking and a refuge for peaceful meditation.”

The forthcoming exhibition also offers a rare opportunity to view several of his celebrated Grainstacks series (1890-1), where Monet endeavoured to capture a specific, transient moment in time, using the variations of colour and light at different times of the day. In effect, trying to make time visible. These paintings of harvested wheat near Giverny where he settled in 1883 are on loan from collections across the world. Another instance of how Monet took inspiration from Normandy to push the boundaries of painting.

Widowed in 1879 and facing financial difficulties at a time when the Modern movement was falling apart, Monet found refuge in the perpetual movement of the natural world. The exhibition will also bring notable paintings depicting the winter cycles of freezing and thawing of the Seine including The Break-up of Ice on the Seine 1880-1, precursors to his Water Lily series.

Bringing modernity to the close of the exhibition, the final room will present an immersive video arrangement (D) Aprés Monet 2020 by French contemporary artist Ange Leccia, created in response to Monet’s final Water Lily paintings which are permanently housed in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. The video combines footage of both Monet’s paintings and his gardens at Giverny. An apt tribute to a master constantly seeking to capture the instantaneous.

For more information: Tate Modern

Read more: France art trail