Monet in London

The Savoy was too sumptuous, complained Claude Monet, returning to the hotel in 1904. His rooms — one for sleeping, one for easels, canvases, palettes, with a balcony over the Thames — were too distractingly plush. He had been happier painting with his knees up to his chin in his ‘bateau atelier’ (a rowboat studio) on the Seine at Argenteuil. Or hidden behind a screen in the ladies’ changing room on the first floor of Monsieur Levy’s dress shop opposite Rouen Cathedral.

Or in the little room for storing bottles in a nightclub with a view of Leicester Square. The place was a sale boîte — ‘dirty dive’ —according to Monet. But what a wonderful, smudgy, night-on-the-tiles, street-lamps-and-sudden-downpour picture he produced. Mornings in Savoy comfort were followed by afternoons painting in the sparser surroundings of St Thomas’ Hospital. From his vantage point south of the river, Monet painted 21 views of the Houses of Parliament.