Impression Sunrise

• Key areas of debate/ interest

  • Representation & optical realism
  • Materials and techniques
  • Socio-economic context + the market
• In what ways is Impressionism arguably the most important movement in modern art?

  • Novel techniques and approaches such as en plein air
  • Rejection of traditional classical naturalism - "painted" brushstrokes rather than naturalistic illusion
  • Engagement with different theories about light/optics - less about the objects and recognizable place and it's mimetic representation than about capturing light and atmospheric conditions
  • How the market becomes the patron
• Critical impressionist quote Laforgue

  "The impressionist sees and renders nature as it is - that is, wholly in terms of colour vibrations"
• Is there a political/socio-economic reading of this work>

  • French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war 1870-71
  • Industrial revolution - Le Havre an industrial and commercial hub
  • Paul Tucker argues "Monet may have seen this painting of a highly commercial site as an answer to the postwar calls for patriotic action and an art that could lead."
• Paul Tucker

  "While it is a poem of light and atmosphere, the painting can also be seen as an ode to the power and beauty of a revitalized France."

  "renewed strength and beauty of the country... Monet's ultimate utopian statement."
• The Impressionists lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colours. Complementary colours were used for their vibrant contrasts and mutual enhancement when juxtaposed.
• Use of light + brushstrokes

  • A thick impasto application of paint means that even reflections on the water's surface appear as substantial as any object in a scene.
  • Monet used light and loose brush strokes that simply suggested the scene rather than exactly depicting what the eye could see.
• Location


  Le Havre in Northwest France was Monet’s hometown and during 1872 he visited the area regularly
• Optical mixing and broken colour effect

  When he painted 'Impression, Sunrise', Monet did not mix colours to create different hues. Nor did he wait for one layer of paint to dry before applying the next. Rather, he used natural colours in layers that each then mixed with the layer of paint below and the production of light, shade and colours happens directly on the canvas
• In this painting, Monet's primary focus was light and the way it interacted with the various elements of the landscape. He also concentrated on saturation and composition.
• foreground

  the two small rowboats in the foreground and the red Sun being the focal elements.
• middle ground

  In the middle ground, more fishing boats are included, while in the background on the left side of the painting are clipper ships with tall masts.
• background


  Behind them are other misty shapes that "are not trees but smokestacks of pack boats and steamships, while on the right in the distance are other masts and chimneys silhouetted against the sky." In order to show these features of industry, Monet eliminated existing houses on the left side of the jetty, leaving the background unobscured.
• The representation of Le Havre, hometown of Monet and a center of industry and commerce, celebrates the "renewed strength and beauty of the country... Monet's ultimate utopian statement." Art demonstrating France's revitalization, Monet's depiction of Le Havre's sunrise mirrors the renewal of France.
• Style 


  The hazy scene of Impression, Sunrise strayed from traditional landscape painting and classic, idealized beauty. Paul Smith suggested that with this style, Monet meant to express "other beliefs about artistic quality which might be tied to the ideologies being consolidated by the emergent bourgeoisie from which he came."
• Loose brush strokes meant to suggest the scene rather than to mimetically represent it demonstrate the emergent Impressionist movement.
• Smith claims that "Impression, Sunrise was about Monet's search for spontaneous expression, but was guided by definite and historically specific ideas about what spontaneous expression was."
• Gordon and Forge claim that sky and water in Impression, Sunrise are hardly distinguishable, boundaries between objects are not obvious, and the paint "becomes the place" and effect, the colours of the paint melding together in "its glooming, opalescent oneness, its foggy blankness, its featureless, expectant emptiness that resembles, for the painter, an empty, uninflected canvas." 
• Gordon and Forge comment that the accents of blue-grey and orange cutting through the haze "are like last-minute revelations that had to wait, not only for the particular glimmer of orange to burn its way through the fog and find its reflective path onto the water and Monet's eye but for the canvas itself, pregnant with the foggy space outside, to be ready to receive it."