Monet painted his series of Rouen Cathedral canvases between 1892 and 1894, returning to the same façade at different times of day to chart how light transformed a fixed architectural subject into something perpetually unstable. When Roy Lichtenstein returned to the motif in 1969 for his Cathedral Series, he inverted the premise entirely.

Where Monet sought to dissolve form into atmosphere, Lichtenstein replaced atmosphere with the mechanical regularity of the Ben-Day dot — making light not an optical phenomenon but a printed one, as reproducible and impersonal as a newspaper photograph. Cathedral #1 (C.75) sets the Gothic façade of Rouen in yellow against white, the architectural detail reduced to interlocking lines and dot fields that give the image a luminous, almost spectral quality. The reference to Monet is not decorative — it is structural.

By choosing a subject that Impressionism had made synonymous with the transience of perception, Lichtenstein posed a challenge to that lineage's values.

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