Rouen Cathedral, End of the Day

In 1892 and 1893 Monet rented rooms across the square from Rouen Cathedral and set up several canvases at once, moving between them as the light shifted over the carved stone. He painted the west front more than 30 times, chasing not the building so much as the exact hour and weather. This one holds the warm, thinning light at the end of the day, when the façade seems almost to dissolve into colour. He carried the canvases back to his garden at Giverny and reworked them through 1894, then showed 20 of them together in Paris. Two from the series are in Moscow, and this is one of them.