Purple and violet dominate Cathedral #4 (C.78), the fourth work in Roy Lichtenstein's Cathedral Series and among the most tonally unified of the group. The Gothic façade of Rouen is set across a narrow chromatic range — dark purple forms against a lighter violet ground — the dot pattern building a surface that vibrates with a restrained intensity. At a distance the image reads as pure colour field; on close inspection the architectural detail reasserts itself through the structure of the strokes. The Cathedral Series was Lichtenstein's most exacting confrontation with Impressionism, and specifically with the serial format that Monet had made central to the Impressionist project. Monet's insistence on returning to the same subject — haystacks, water lilies, Rouen Cathedral — was a position that the subject itself mattered less than the conditions of its perception.

Lichtenstein accepted the series format but challenged everything else: where Monet varied the mark to capture changing light, Lichtenstein kept the mark constant and varied only the colour.

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