Cathedral #5 (C.79) brought the most unexpected colour relationship into Roy Lichtenstein's Cathedral Series: olive green against a darker ground, the façade of Rouen set in a palette that sits entirely outside the warm atmospheric range Monet had employed.

Where Impressionism's Rouen series moved through the oranges, pinks, and whites of French daylight, Lichtenstein's works were never constrained by natural colour — his palette was declarative, arbitrary, chosen for its effect rather than its descriptive accuracy.

By replacing Monet's observed palette with one that declared its own artificiality, he made the case that perception is always mediated, always shaped by prior codes, never the unfiltered experience that Impressionism claimed. Through the late 1960s and into the 1970s Lichtenstein worked through Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism — and in each one applied his style to the different movements, testing what was revealed in the process. Cathedral #5 (C.79), with its dissonant palette, makes the point in its most unguarded form. The olive green announces its own distance from Monet, refusing any reading that might soften the confrontation between Impressionist lineage and Pop Art method into mere homage.

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