Week 3 Impressionism Claude Monet

Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise

To quote our book by Stokstad and Cothern on page 984, “While their exhibition received some positive reviews, one critic, Louis Leroy, writing in the satirical journal Charivari, seized upon the title of Monet’s painting Impression: Sunrise (SEE FIG. 30-26 page 985), and dubbed the entire exhibition “impressionist.” Leroy sought to ridicule the fast, open brushstrokes and unfinished look of some of the paintings, but Monet and his colleagues liked the name and kept it as it aptly described their aim to render the fleeting moment in paint.” This is a great credit for a work of art to claim. And it is these very brushstrokes and unfinished look that makes this painting so truly an impressionist work of color and light.

The viewer does not even notice at the very first look that this painting appears to be a color blocking for the real modeled work. It is not the lack of refinement that makes the viewer either stop and stare, or walk quickly away. This is not because the work is clearly incomplete to the realist eye it is the colors that do this little trick. The way the colors interact with the light how the density of the shadows give a flat appearance to the overall work. This unfinished state is perfect for the intense effect on the viewer that causes the bones to become chilled with the new day.

The colors of this painting run a chill up your spine. You can feel the intense cold created by the blues and greens. The world is just beginning to come to life again and it is bitterly cold. The travelers on the boats in near blackness are no more than shape and shadow do nothing to alleviate the impression of freezing temperatures. The blue and green in the sky and waters create a mist which deepens into a fog. You’re lost and alone in the cold.

Your eyes are attracted to the one promise of warmth in the painting that is the coming of the sun. It is this red, yellow, orange orb and its streak across the water that begins to ting the sky with the faintest of peach coloring. Telling the viewer the day will be warm and here on the water just might not be such a bad place to be. But what truly make the colors work is not how cold or warm the viewer is made to feel it is the light that is captured at that moment in time. There is no true white or black in this painting so you are forced to accept the shading that hints at the structure of the world in the distance. These values that are captured in the gaining light bring the colors to life.

It is the quick loose stokes of the brush that allowed for Monet to capture the different tones and hues of light as it began to spread out from the dawning of the sun. On the right where the sun is most bright in the sky we seen the beginnings of the dark shadows hold their ground against the coming light. These structures start to tell their shape and use because of the ability to paint in the outdoors. These lights were truly from the sun in the sky not some memory or snapshot. Although the edges run off of the canvas leaving the viewer at a strange angle to the composition.

The composition is a perspective of great expanse yet it is visually flatter than it should or could have been at any other time of day. Shapes are vague lines or splotches of color there is no realism in this work the artist is interested in the light alone. In the foreground there is an impression for the eye of the waves in the water. Even they only speak to the lights, darks and shades of gray in between that this brilliant color scheme speaks so clearly. With the coming of the light into the world comes color and the dark of night begins to wash away. The world begins to become recognizable again.

This lack of completion and loose brush strokes that apply one color against the next in no certain pattern are the telling marks of impressionism. The study of light and color in this work are helped by an ability to work en plein air thanks to a new invention the oil paint tube. Monet captured the moment in time when the world was just being to be born again in color and light. No more than a mere impression of the day at its beginning.