What Monet saw in London's fog

The painting that holds me longest at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel is the Houses of Parliament, its towers thinning into mist. I stand in front of it wondering what it felt like to watch fog drift over the Thames while the setting sun pushed through. Something about that city made Monet come back again and again, and the Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges became his subjects in the fog. I left the gallery and went back the next day.

London has been called the City of Dreams, and it has fed art, literature and hundreds of songs. It was also called the Big Smoke, a nickname earned by the pollution that thickened in the 1890s. Beauty sits in the eye of the beholder, and the rawness of the place, fog included, is what pulled painters towards it. Monet was one of them.

The painter who gave the movement its name

Oscar-Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 and grew up in Normandy before returning to the capital, where he set up a studio in Pigalle, in Montmartre. He is regarded as the founder of the Impressionist movement. His first London stay came when France went to war with Prussia. The city gave him safety, and it also gave him an audience and room to work. Alongside other French painters he began painting views of London, drawn to its light and colour. He soon went home, settling at Giverny outside Paris, where the garden became one of his lifelong subjects.

A line of his on the exhibition wall puts it plainly: without fog, London would not be a beautiful city. Giverny is an easy day trip from Paris, and the garden appeared briefly in the film Midnight in Paris. Half-day and full-day tours run from the city if you would rather not arrange the trip yourself. At the Beyeler you can see paintings of the Seine, the water lilies and Giverny itself.

Why the fog paintings came thirty years later

Here is the detail that surprised me. The views of Charing Cross and Waterloo bridges in fog do not belong to that first visit. They came three decades afterwards. Monet's son Michel was studying in London and fell ill, and the family travelled to see him. They stayed at the Savoy, whose windows look straight down the Thames towards both bridges. Further trips followed, and he moved his base to St Thomas' Hospital so he could paint the Houses of Parliament from its terrace. What held him was the combination of history and modernity in the same skyline.

Sixty-two paintings in one place

Monet hangs in museums across the world, but until May 2017 the Fondation Beyeler brought together 62 of his paintings from major collections in Europe, the United States and Japan, marking the museum's 20th anniversary. The exhibition was described as a celebration of light and colour, and it covers the impressionist work as well as the later pictures: Mediterranean landscapes, Atlantic coasts, meadows and cathedrals.

Basel is a good place for this. The city holds 40 museums, and the Beyeler is reason enough to spend a day among them. You can also combine hiking and art while crossing the Swiss-German border.

Would London look better in winter?

I have been to London once, in summer, and Monet's fog makes me want to see it in winter. The city he painted is not a postcard; it is soft, dirty and full of weather.

What do you make of the way art attaches itself to a city — London in fog, Paris in rain — and of travel that follows a painting? If you have lived in either place, or simply stood on a bridge in bad weather, I would like to hear about it.

The exhibition information came from the brochure and, mostly, from the catalogue published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, which you can buy through the museum or from its online art shop. I was invited to visit the museum; the opinions here are my own. Photographs of the Houses of Parliament and of foggy London are by Eric Hissinger and MsSaraKelly respectively, both via Flickr.

If you liked this piece, these might suit you too: Hike your way through art from Germany to Switzerland, Things you can get away with if you live in Basel, Getting around Basel with Swiss-German, Tips on visiting Paris when you don't speak French and Staying in Montmartre and making friends.