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The climax of this show is, inevitably, the Cathedrals, Monet's repeated views of the west front of the Gothic Cathedral of Rouen: art about art. Between 1892 and 1895 he produced 30 of them; ten are lined up in Boston. Some critics have shied away from them as pictorial near absurdities, Gothic rendered as melting ice cream, architecture without a line anywhere. It would be hard to argue this for long in front of the paintings themselves. How could such an endlessly complicated form as this Gothic facade, with all its peaks, hollows, spires, bosses and moldings, be so fully rendered in terms of color and the space that color creates? Monet's control is astounding. With the sun behind it, the facade is a looming cliff of blue shadows; as the light moves onto its face, it becomes a stupendously intricate cellular structure, a vertical reef of stone, its grain and warmth evoked by the texture of the paint, flushed by radiance, in which every last touch of pigment seems operative.
Monet's power to evoke substance through paint was as strong as Rembrandt's. The next 100 years would be full of art about art, but one may doubt whether any of it quite equaled the level of intelligence and passion -- both seizing the motif and respectfully deferring to it -- that is figured forth in Monet's Cathedrals.