The World of Myth Magazine

The impressionists were radicals, which sounds weird to say these days. Among their number are some of the most famous artists in history, and it is easy to find samples of their work bleeding through into pop culture. Everyone has almost certainly seen a piece by an Impressionist artist, even if they did not know what it was called, or who painted it. Names like Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas are among their number, but the most important painter of the moment, and from whom the name of their movement came, was Claude Monet.

He is one of the few artists most people who otherwise do not know very much about art will know, alongside he likes of Picasso, Van Gogh, or Da Vinci. In his life, Monet both named and exemplified the Impressionist movement with his 1872 Impression – Sunrise. It was first shown to the public in what is now called the 'Exhibition of the Impressionists' in Paris, which in retrospect formally announced the Impressionist movement as an artistic and creative force. This movement became extremely influential, and today Monet's paintings are esteemed as works of an artistic genius.

Even today, Impression – Sunrise is quite a striking image and you cannot help but notice it. It is an image of the sun rising in the horizon, just over a mist covered harbor, with a small boat peacefully strolling through the water before us. There is a strong sense of serene peace here, but there is also a joy in the use of somewhat muted colors to simulate the fog - and some definite distant shapes to suggest (rather than show) the cranes and pulleys in the background. The use of color and proportion is not absolutely realistic, but is a suggestion, rather than a representation, that is central to Monet's intention here: to give an impression of the scene rather than showing the scene as it actually appeared. This makes the word 'Impression' in the title very appropriate.

Art up until that point was influenced by neo-classical ideas, and a sort of clinical, objective representation was considered the ideal aim for artists. Even during the Romantic era, which saw a huge revolution in literature, music and even architecture, the ideal standard for art often remained quite conservative in many ways. Compare Monet's piece above with this, Modern Romania by Gheorghe Tattarescu in 1866:

Here the colors and the lines, and the details of the scene, are much more clearly and exactly defined. In a sense, Impressionism was the first stirrings of later Modernist forms of art.

Also, while neo-classical art was often depicting nature, or things in a natural setting, it was always produced away from nature - in a study or in a workshop, worked and worked until it had been 'perfected'. This was simply not in the interest of the Impressionists, who would paint their work in nature, with the real scene before them. This was very unconventional. Even Turner, who greatly influenced the Impressionists, was not commonly actually painting within in the scene itself. This painting in and among nature was an attempt to better capture the movement and the life of the scene, which was supported with a new way of using paint and combining color: they would use big splotches of paint, dapped, or heavily smeared onto the canvas. The combination of splotches of color with not-quite-right color choices often gives Impressionist work the feel of a dream, or something half remembered. Even the name 'Impression – Sunrise' was at the time unconventional. In art criticism before this painting, the word zimpression was used in a hostile way, to be critical. It was saying that the work had failed to capture the actuality of the scene. The Impressionists, then, where breaking all of the rules of conventional art.

This attempt to impress the feel and sensation of the scene on the viewer became a major part of the wider Impressionist movement. It is very easy to feel an appreciation for the natural world's beauty when you see something like Impression – Sunrise, and because of their attempts to find the warmth and color in the scene they can even be uplifting in a way neoclassical art cannot usually be. See for example another piece by Monet, Water lilies and Japanese Bridge, 1899:

However, in a sense, 'Impression – Sunrise' itself is something of an oddity in a collection of Impressionist works. You often get images of warm and bright summer days, somewhere in the middle of the countryside, but here is instead a harbor under the gray of a foggy dawn, an industrial, work-a-day area. The scene is the port of La Havere, in France (interestingly, the same city Jean Paul Sartre would later depict so gloomily in his famous book Nausa). This is not to suggest that Impression – Sunrise is distinctly unusual as an impressionist painting, it just does not typify it. It is something of an experiment or a proto-type of the style Impressionism would soon become.