What if?
Claude Monet (1840–1926) and nocturnal painting over Leicester Square

 

 

 

Claire Brisby

 

 

In the book Monet and London Views of the Thames that accompanied the exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in 2024 of Claude Monet’s daytime views of the London river, Karen Serres remarks on Monet’s interest in painting on other sites in London at the time, one at the Tower of London and the other at Leicester Square. While Monet abandoned the Tower of London site, despite having obtained ministerial authorisation, he progressed the subject of Leicester Square sufficiently to secure a vantage point ‘in a private club with a view of Leicester square’.^[1] Monet’s pursuit of the site of Leicester Square over that of the Tower was driven by an intention to paint the urban lights of evening, but progress at the site was short-lived and unfruitful except for some drawings.

This episode in Monet’s achievement in London deserves more than passing comment for two reasons. First, its documentation in Monet’s correspondence early in 1901 reveals the painter tackling a nocturnal subject otherwise unprecedented in his work; secondly, it illuminates Monet’s use of drawing, which remains a marginalised aspect of his working practice in spite of scholarly attention devoted to the subject in recent years.^[2] This short notice locates Monet’s unnamed vantage point in a private club at Leicester Square as having been in the Beefsteak Club, and suggests how pinpointing the view over the popular entertainment hub in London facilitates investigation of Monet’s enterprise in nocturnal painting and assessment of its significance in Monet’s career.

The material evidence of the episode may be scarce but there is documentary evidence of it in his regular letters to his wife Alice in France during the fourth and last of his sojourns in London. This was the time that he was working on a series of river views, from 24 January to April 1901, and the letters enable its reconstruction. The documentation of the episode is all the more valuable for unmasking Monet’s customary reticence about his use of drawings: he felt able to talk about it as he relaxed in a private disclosure to his wife.

A total of 10 letters, published by Daniel Wildenstein, refer to the episode and date from a period of approximately four weeks mid-way through Monet’s time in London, from Sunday 17 February into mid-March, the penultimate letter of the series being the last bearing a date,: the 10th of that month.^[3] On that day, Monet remarks on the practice of drawing he had adopted to overcome the difficulty of finishing scenes on canvas on account of the ever-changing atmospheric effects of weather in England, and he laments on having to resort to making ‘des pochades, de vraies impressions’.^[4] His regretful regard of what he described as rough pocket-book sketches nevertheless recognised their value for the authenticity of their impressions. These rough pocket-book sketches accompany the series of 26 pastel drawings Monet made throughout his last sojourn in London, from the first few days when he had resorted to pastel drawing pending the arrival of the delayed luggage that he considered useful for his painting.^[5]

Wildenstein’s remarks about pochade drawings of Leicester Square are sourced in a sequence of letters in March 1901 including the one of 10 March introduced above. To the group of river scene pochades Wildenstein adds a small number of pochades mentioned by Monet and described as nocturnal scenes of Leicester Square with the Empire Theatre illuminated:

 

Au nombre de ces pochades on peut compter la courte série des Leicester Square traitées en nocturne (1615–1617) fait exceptionnel chez Monet, avec les lumières de l’Empire Theatre.^[6]

 

This series of pocket-book-sized drawings of Leicester Square is not quantified and Serres states that the drawings are dispersed in private collections.^[7] These pochades of Leicester Square are elusive fruits of Monet’s venture into nocturnal painting, which was under way by the third week in February. Wildenstein’s paraphrased account of Monet’s earlier letters establishes that Monet had resorted to the ‘club of the Green Room situated on the corner of St Martin’s Street [sic] where a miserable cur horrible cabot showed him a room no bigger than a hand with a window offering a superb view’.^[8]

An idea of the nature of these pochades can be gleaned from some drawings in the sketchbook belonging to the series in the Musée Marmottan, Paris, of work from the time of Monet’s sojourns in London. They include a vertical image of the towers of Parliament and a double-page spread of repeated motifs of shallow-keeled vessels with upright masts and triangular-shaped sails.^[9] Likewise, images of otherwise unverified drawings of several sketches of the river offer a further hint as to the nature of Monet’s Leicester Square sketches: they are characterised by repeated bold soft pencil strokes outlining vessels on water, below smudged renderings of cloud formations.^[10] Few as these examples of pochades may be, Wildenstein recognised their value as evidence of Monet’s exceptional treatment of a nocturnal subject and interest in rendering artificial lighting as exemplified in the lights of the Empire Theatre.^[11] The sketch drawings are also important for highlighting Monet’s use of drawing in the exploratory stages of painting.^[12]

From the lack of painted work from the episode we infer that, contrary to the drawings of the river Monet appreciated for his river paintings, these pochades of Leicester Square failed to inspire him, and alert us to the fact that nocturnal painting for Monet formed an uncomfortable departure from his natural predisposition for daylight subjects.

The lack of surviving material from Monet’s enterprise at Leicester Square reflects the ambiguities of the venture. But his pursuit of a vantage point shows how significant it was intended to be. The room that Monet secured in 1901, in an elusive private club described by Wildenstein as the ‘Green Room’ on the corner of ‘St Martin Street’ can in fact, as mentioned above, be identified as the Beefsteak, a gentleman’s club that had opened five years previously in December 1896 in Green Street (hence Wildenstein’s reference) adjacent to Leicester Square (not to be confused with the Green Street in Mayfair).^[13] Monet’s view over Leicester Square from Green Street predates that street’s renaming to Irving Street, which took place after the death of the actor and theatre manager Sir Henry Irving in 1905. Situated on the corner of Green Street (now Irving Street) and Charing Cross Road (to which St Martin’s Lane runs parallel to the east – hence Wildenstein’s remarks) the Beefsteak Club lies on the most direct route from the Savoy Hotel in the Strand to the Café Royal in Regent Street (Pl 1). This was the route that Monet followed at least once a week: he was staying in the Savoy but dined at the Café Royal on the rest-day of the hotel’s dining-room.^[14]

 

 

1 Ordnance survey map of 1895 marked in red with the route of Claude Monet from the Savoy Hotel (at right) to the Beefsteak Club on Green Street (now Irving Street) at left

 

 

The notion of a club identified by name with the colour green speaks of the period affectations for green in interior design of the Aesthetic movement. Monet’s close artistic associate in London, James MacNeill Whistler, was not only a Beefsteak Club member but also a prominent Aesthete. Whistler was commissioned by fellow club-member Richard d’Oyly Carte to decorate the house he occupied from 1881 until his death in 1901 at no 4 Adelphi Terrace, and his treatment of the billiard-room, painting the walls billiard-cloth green, exemplified the mixed-hue tonalities of the Aesthetic interior.^[15] Whistler’s scheme contrasted sensationally with the pastel hues of the original neo-classical schemes of the interiors formerly inhabited by Robert Adam, who had been responsible for the architectural design of the terrace. The somewhat lugubrious Aesthetic taste favoured by Whistler and his patron was parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Aesthetic Opera’ Patience, produced at the Savoy Theatre by the d’Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1881, in the rhyming mockery of a fashionable London gallery alluded to as ‘greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery’.^[16]

Monet’s choice of Leicester Square as a site for painting also manifests the prevailing enthusiasm for modern electricity as well as an understandable predisposition towards French novelties in the English capital. From his accommodation at the Savoy Hotel, Monet benefited from electricity throughout, which distinguished the newest hotel in London when it was completed in 1889. It powered the lighting but also the lifts that took Monet to the upper floors. His patronage of the hotel also meant that he was living next to the Savoy Theatre, which in 1881 had pioneered electricity in a public building. The director of the Savoy hotel, who is reported to have been instrumental in securing Monet’s viewpoint over the square at the Beefsteak, can be identified as Richard d’Oyly Carte, the impresario who had developed both the Savoy theatre and the hotel.^[17] The Beefsteak dining-room had been recreated from the original designed in the club’s former premises in King William Street, where in 1876 it had pioneered the use of electric lighting in a private club.^[18]

Monet’s patronage of the Café Royal in turn reflects his support for a French-founded establishment, while his interest in Leicester Square as an entertainment destination acknowledged the three French-owned hotels operating in the area. Moreover, for 18 months, from 1896, the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière’s novel attraction of the cinématographe motion picture system could be enjoyed at the Empire Theatre.

Monet’s vantage point at the Beefsteak in Green Street, situated at an angle to the square, offered an oblique perspective onto Leicester Square reminiscent of the angular perspectives sought by Camille Pissarro. Four years previously in 1897, Pissarro had taken an upper-floor hotel room in Paris overlooking the juncture of radiating boulevards, which he rendered in the nocturnal scene of the Boulevard de Montmartre. Monet’s habit of painting from the upper floors of the Savoy Hotel in London imitated Pissarro’s example, which itself had been encouraged by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel – who was also backing Monet’s series of the Thames. Monet’s consciousness of Pissarro’s example drew on their mutual interest in London since their encounter there engineered by Durand-Ruel in 1871, and their respective resort to inner rooms to paint external scenes arose from their common experience of failing eyesight.

However aligned their intentions were, Monet’s failure to render the lights of Leicester Square’s Empire Theatre in paint exposes the divergent nature of their practices, revealing Monet’s prioritisation of colour blending and tonal harmony in his handling of paint. In contrast, Pissarro’s paintwork differentiates light qualities through colour. The use of cool white describes electric street lighting, enhanced with halos of indigo blue, thus distinguishing it from the mellow yellow tonalities of architectural gaslighting and from the warm orange hues of the oil-burning lamps that animated the cabs ranked outside the Parisian Théâtre des Variétés. This contrast between of the two artists’ handling of paint defines the comparatively conservative stability of Monet’s practice beside the elder Pissarro’s flexible transition from techniques of daylight painting to treatments of nocturnal subjects.

Monet’s response to expectations of nocturnal scenes belies the ambivalent complexities the matter presented him. When questioned directly by the Anglo-German diplomat, writer, and patron Count Harry von Kessler, who visited Monet at Giverny in November 1903, Monet chose to ignore mention of the enterprise in Green Street two years previously.^[19] His answer, reported by Kessler, evasively excused himself from having even considered painting at night after the physical toll of fatigue from painting throughout the day. His elusive reply went on to allude to Whistler’s achievement in his Nocturnes, while admitting his own faltering confidence in attempting to imitate that example. At the same time, he implicitly did not exclude, even at that retrospective stage, confronting the task in the future.

 

 

 

1. K Serres, Monet and London Views of the Thames, London 2024, p37, nn76, 77. ↑
2. J Ganz and R Kendall, The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings, Williamstown MA 2007. The publication accompanied the exhibition of the same name at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown MA; digitised revision of D Wildenstein’s catalogue https://digitalprojects.epl.art/monet/introduction [accessed 4 April 2025] and essay, G Lefebvre, Claude Monet, les pastels. Un recueil d’essais et de commentaires pour accompagner le catalogue raisonné – les Pastels de Londres https://monet-pastels.wpi.art/londres/ ↑
3. D Wildenstein, Claude Monet: biographie et catalogue raisonné, 5 vols, Lausanne and Paris 1974–91, vol IV (1985) p24, via https://view.publitas.com/wildenstein-plattner-institute-ol46yv9z6qv6/c-r_claude_monet_tome_iv_wildenstein_institute_fr/page/34-35 [accessed 21/02/2025] letters nos. 1606a Sunday 17 February 1901; 1608c Friday 22 February 1901; 1610 Tuesday 26 February 1901;1610a; 1611 2 March 1901; 1612 5 March 1901; 1613; 1615; 1616 10 March 1901; 1617. ↑
4. Wildenstein as at n3, hereafter Wildenstein) p24, n205, letter no. 1616, 10 March 1901. ↑
5. Lefebvre, n6, letter no. 1590, 28 January 1901. ↑
6. Wildenstein, p24, letter 1615, nd; letter 1616, 10 March 1901; letter 1617, nd. ↑
7. Serres, p37, n 7. ↑
8. Wildenstein, p24, n206, letters 1608c, Friday 22 February 1901; 1610, Tuesday 26 February 1901. ↑
9. Ganz and Kendall, p249, fig. 250, London, The Towers of Parliament, c1899–1990, pencil, from Sketchbook 3, fol 18v, Musee Marmottan, Paris [D183]. ↑
10. Lefebvre, fig. 8. Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, les barques sur la Tamise, 1902 (cmf6r5, P105) and https://digitalprojects.epl.art/monet/introduction, ‘Boats on the Thames’ MRJZ9 (P 107). ↑
11. Wildenstein, p24, letters no 1615–1617. ↑
12. Serres, p37, n77. ↑
13. J Martin Robinson, The History of the Beefsteak Club, 2024, Index, ‘Green Street (Irving Steet) club premises from 1896’; and p45; B Weinreb and C Hibbert, The London Encylopaedia, London 1983, p411; not to be confused with Green Street in Mayfair, as in J Stedman, W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre, Oxford 1996, p138. ↑
14. Serres, p36. ↑
15. Robinson, p57. ↑
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosvenor_Gallery [accessed 25 March 2025]. ↑
17. Serres, p37, n76; Martin Robinson, p57. ↑
18. Weinreb and Hibbert, p7; Robinson, pp41–42. ↑
19. Serres, p29, n27; Harry Kessler, Journal: regards sur l’art et les artistes contemporains, 1889–1937, Irsel Berger, ed, Paris 2017, vol 1, para 37: diary entry 28 November 1903. ↑