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Dimensions: 92 by 92cm., 36¼ by 36¼in.
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Provenance: Estate of the artist; thence by descent to the present owner
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Notes: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
The present work is part of Claus' series Réverbérations sur la Tamise (Reverberations on the Thames) that the artist created between 1914-1919, during his sojourn in London (lot 311). Varied representations of familiar London monuments such as the Tower of London, Waterloo Bridge, Westminster Bridge and London Bridge all feature in Claus' London veduti of that period. From a small window on the fifth floor of Monbray House, at the corner of Norfolk Street between Charing Cross and Temple, Claus created atmospherically different scenes of the same view and composition. The present work lends itself easily to comparisons with Turner, Whistler and chiefly Monet's scenes of London such as Waterloo Bridge, temps gris (fig. 1), in both the subject and handling. The cosmopolitan, industrial bustle of early twentieth-century London is shown in soft, grey tones through loose, rapid brushstrokes in both works. In Bateaux à Vapeur sur la Tamise, however, Claus' resistance to purely describing the phenomena of light can be seen in the wider range of values and the definition of elements of the subject with line and detail. 'There where the world saw only fog, smoke, vapour and dust, Claus saw effects, apparitions and Sylphides of colour curving in the skies, phosphorescent naiads illuminating the floods' (Frédéric de Smet, 'Emile Claus', L'Art Belge, April 1921, p. 6). Capturing the juxtaposition of pure colour and subtle nuances, Claus imbues his oeuvre with a certain joy in his surroundings, an appreciative acknowledgment of both the ambience and more tangible and mundane elements of his subject. In his London views lay the enthusiasm of discovery, and the uprooted Belgian found unadulterated expression in his mastery of this single view from his London window.
Claus did not simply limit himself to registering the effects of light and colour, but would modified these impressions according to the environment he was describing. This was a visceral interpretation of Impressionism, in which light occupied its own tangible seat of importance, without excluding detail or denying an organic union with form. Claus however avoided modernist rhetoric and anything more than passing interest in trends such as Pointillism and Fauvism. He expressed his surroundings and the everyday life that spoke so fluently to him with a sense of realism and the 'matérialité de la représentation' that defined his work. The representational simplicity and purity, as well as the sensitivity to ambience and poetic force, were hallmarks of the Belgian realist-impressionist. FIG. 1, Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, temps gris, 1903 Ordrupgaardsamlingen, Copenhagen
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