Rouen Cathedral, Portal, Front View

The title says exactly where Monet stood: the portal of Rouen Cathedral, seen from the front. The central doorway sits in the middle of the canvas, and the tops of the towers on either side run off the edge, leaving only thin strips of pale sky. The stone is built up in thick crusts of brown, grey and violet, and the picture is also known as Harmony in Brown. His dealer Durand-Ruel hung it with the other cathedral views at his Paris gallery in 1895. Six years later the canvas went to auction, passed through the Bernheim-Jeune gallery and found its way back to Monet at Giverny. In 1907 the French state bought it from him for the Musée du Luxembourg, the Paris museum then kept for living artists. Eight years on it was lent across the Atlantic to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.