Claude Monet (1840 - 1926)
Related: Impressionism - Modern Art - French art
Key dates: 1874
Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape. --from a 1874 review by Louis Leroy of Impression, soleil levant
Impression, soleil levant (1873/1874) - Claude Monet
Critic Louis Leroy inadvertently coined the term Impressionism in a satiric review of this painting.
Biography
Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926) was a French impressionist painter. His painting Impression: Sunrise was the source for the naming of the Impressionism movement. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet [Mar 2006]
Impression, Sunrise (1873/1874)
Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) is a painting by Claude Monet, for which the Impressionist movement was named.
Dated 1872, but probably created in 1873, its subject is the harbour of Le Havre, using very loose brush strokes that suggest rather than delineate it. Monet explained the title later: "I was asked to give a title for the catalogue; I couldn't very well call it a view of Le Havre. So I said: 'Put Impression.'"
It was displayed in 1874 during the first independent art show of the Impressionists (who were not yet known by that name). Critic Louis Leroy, inspired by the painting's name, titled his hostile review of the show in Le Charivari newspaper, "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", thus inadvertantly naming the new art movement. He wrote:
Impression — I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape. [25 April 1874]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression%2C_Sunrise [Mar 2006]
The Gare St-Lazare (1877) - Claude Monet
The Gare St-Lazare (1877) - Claude Monet
After his return to France from London, Monet lived from 1871-78 at Argenteuil, on the Seine near Paris. In January 1877 he rented a small flat and a studio near the Gare St-Lazare, and in the fourth Impressionist exhibition which opened in April of that year, he exhibited seven canvases of the railway station.
This painting is one of four surviving canvases representing the interior of the station. Trains and railways had been depicted in earlier Impressionist works (and by Turner in his 'Rain, Steam and Speed'), but were not generally regarded as aesthetically palatable subjects.
Monet's exceptional views of the Gare St-Lazare resemble interior landscapes, with smoke from the engines creating the same effect as clouds in the sky. Swift brushstrokes indicate the gleaming engines to the right and the crowd of passengers on the platform. --http://www.nationalgallery.org
See also: painting - subject matter - Claude Monet - Impressionism - train - 1877 - Paris
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