Rouen Cathedral, Portal and Tower d'Albane, Dawn

Monet signed and dated this canvas 1894 at the lower left, though he had begun it in front of Rouen Cathedral a year or two earlier. It shows the portal and the Tour d'Albane in the first light of the day, and he finished it at Giverny. After that it went through American hands, and the prices were written down each time. In April 1900 it sold at auction in New York for 3,100 dollars. In February 1902 it came up again, in the sale of the New York collector Edward Milliken, and went for 4,000, bought through the Knoedler gallery for Bertha Palmer of Chicago, one of the biggest buyers of Monet in America. Many of her paintings went to the Art Institute of Chicago after her death in 1918. This one stayed with her son, Honoré, who sold it to a New York gallery in 1923. In January 1924 the Museum of Fine Arts bought it for 11,000 dollars, more than three times the price of 1900.