Claude Monet’s London paintings in the Cortault Gallery: Beauty of the Smog.

When air pollution made Londoners sick, one person saw it as an idyllic motif: the impressionist Claude Monet. Now Cortault Gallery is bringing together his London series for the first time where it was created.

Visitors to London who had the privilege of staying at the Savoy in September 1899 and staying in a room facing the Thames on the sixth floor would not have missed the strong smell of oil paint that permeated the corridors. His source was the palette of the painter Claude Monet. He had stayed in the luxury hotel on the beach with his second wife Alice and her daughter Germaine Hoschedé. While the ladies explored the city, he placed an easel on the balcony of his suite and began painting.