Claude Monet
1903
Oil on canvas
73.7 x 100.3 cm
Claude Monet particularly favoured the pictorial device of placing at the top of his compositions a small sun – the ‘little red ball’, as he called it – just piercing through the fog. Its light casts a warm glow on the river below. This motif, used in other paintings in the series, creates a striking colour contrast with the surrounding darker elements. Although one imagines that this is an evening scene, the sun’s easterly position disproves this. Darkness has descended not with night-time but with a thick fog.