Impressive sunrise. Claude Monet "Impression. Rising Sun": description of the painting

Claude Monet, who became the founder of the impressionist, painted the canvas “Impression. Rising Sun” in 1872. The painting depicts the old port of Le Havre. The picture was painted in a fit of inspiration, when the rising sun paints the sky with new colors every minute. The artist had no more than ten minutes to create the outline of the match, draw the water, indicate the sun and add the shimmer of the sun's rays. He was in a hurry to convey all the shades of the sky, until the daylight added new color transitions.

Claude Monet, recalling the creation of the canvas: “And don’t tell me that in the studio you can recreate everything from memory. The main thing is to seize the moment. How much time did I have? For about ten minutes, no more, I grabbed the easel, brushes and began to apply sweeping large strokes.”

The history of the painting is truly unusual. It was this work that served as the impetus for the development of a new artistic direction in painting. In 1874, this creation was presented at an independent exhibition, but not everyone appreciated Monet’s efforts. Journalist Louis Leroy called the artists impressionists (which means imprinters), ridiculing the presented canvases. But the devastating text did not upset the creator; instead, Claude Monet and his like-minded people began to promote a new direction, taking the name for their own group from Louis’s article.

The canvas was placed in the Marmottan Museum, where many of Monet's paintings are still kept. In 1985, the painting was stolen; it was returned to its place 5 years later - in 1991.

Monet, like many impressionists, was obsessed with the color scheme of the canvas. The artist devoted a lot of time to the color component of the painting, although many visitors to the exhibition did not even know about it. "Impression. Rising Sun” is made with a minimal number of shades - a chilly morning in bluish tones, and the sun shrouded in a haze of cold air. The daylight could become bright accent in the picture, but it also looks gloomy, shrouded in the shackles of the receding night.

The French impressionist specifically showed the port as minimalistic and cold, this is exactly how the locals saw it - the sky smoothly flowed into the deep sea, a circle of sun with a low tide on the water, vague outlines of the decks of moored ships.

However, the minimal set of colors did not affect the atmosphere of the canvas itself. It looks rich and vibrant, ideally conveys the picture of that early time of day, allows you to feel the cool, clean air and the sound of the waves.

• Initially, Claude Monet considered this work to be just another painting that could not be sold.
• After the unsuccessful exhibition, many visitors demanded that the money they spent be returned to them. And Monet’s painting was compared to the wallpaper in the hall, arguing that it looked more colorful and picturesque than the work of the impressionist.
• The sky and water are so similar in work that if the picture is turned over, they can easily replace each other. Reflections on the water can become a new sky, and the skyline is perfect for the role of cold water.

Date of creation: 1872.
Type: oil on canvas.
Dimensions: 48*63 cm.
Location: Marmottan Museum (Paris)

Rising Sun

History of creation

Famous French impressionist Claude Monet finished work on this painting in 1872. She laid the foundation for the painting style known as impressionism. This work was shown at the first exhibition of Claude and other young artists seeking artistic freedom in 1874. One well-known critic at that time was so amazed by Monet’s landscape that he wrote an article about her and the entire exhibition, where he jokingly called the painters “impressors,” as they came to be called. He came up with a name for them from the word “impression” mentioned in the title of the canvas, which translated into English means “impression”, so on English language they were called impressionists.

The critic's article was published in a well-known newspaper and was called “Exhibition of the Impressed.” Today people would be little interested in such a name, but then it was very funny to society. The artists, instead of being offended by people, officially declared themselves under this name, and since then everyone knows them as impressionists.

Road to Louveciennes, melting snow, sunset

Color solution

The Impressionists tended to use wide and bright color range in his works, Claude Monet was no exception. He always spent a lot of time selecting the ideal palette of shades for his canvases. The painting depicts the port of Le Havre, which can barely be seen, as it is done in quick, light strokes, simply indicating its silhouette. This allows the viewer not to be distracted by it from the overall plot of the picture, and also evokes a spirit of mystery and mystery. The sun and sky in the painting look faded and pale, making the landscape seem damp and foggy. Interesting fact is that the artist painted this landscape with bright and saturated colors, without making them lighter at all, which did not stop him from depicting the fog as rich and natural. Monet believed that dull, diluted colors would make the landscape uninteresting to the viewer. The sun and its reflection in the river are made in the same color. If the image is converted to black and white, the sun will no longer stand out at all.

Today the canvas is kept in the Marmottan Museum in Paris. This place houses quite a few paintings created by Monet. Later, in 1985, the painting was stolen and returned to the museum only five years later, where it remains to this day.

Painting “Impression. Rising Sun" updated: October 23, 2017 by: Valentina

In the time of Claude Monet, the word "impressionism" was a gross insult. However, the artist, from whose painting this phenomenon in painting began, was not at all worried. He didn’t care much about people at all; he didn’t even spend time on canvases with them. What Monet was really fascinated by was nature.

The artist became the first to overthrow man from the pedestal of the “protagonist” and erect light there. This radically changed not only painting, but also culture as a whole. The worldview itself was turned upside down. People began to look differently not only at art, but also at the world around them.

Plot

“That morning I jumped out of bed to catch the elusive, because at sunrise the light is constantly changing. It must be written immediately, every shade. How much time did I have? 10 minutes, no more. And I grabbed the easel, brushes and began to apply large, sweeping strokes.” This is how a programmatic work was created, from which impressionism began.

The painting was painted from life in the old outport of Le Havre. In this city, Monet grew up and first realized himself as an artist.

Every second of sunrise is unique and inimitable, Monet argued. We see countless shades of gray on the canvas. Masts and docks are shown in sharp strokes. And the sun itself in fiery tones. Such bold, sweeping strokes seemed untidy, even rude, to many contemporaries. There were many who considered the painting an unfinished sketch. Visitors to the exhibition at which the painting was presented were indignant, declaring that even wallpaper paper would look better.

By the way, among later researchers of Monet’s work there were those who called the painting the effect of the Moon in the fog, believing that the artist depicted not a sunrise, but a sunset. To dispel doubts, an American researcher, after studying photographs and meteorological data, found that the painting could only have been painted on November 13, 1872 at 7:35.

"Women in the Garden", 1866-1867. A rare example of Monet's painting with people
Wikimedia Commons

Context

Claude Monet was an innovator. He was interested in the state of nature and impressions of it. As for scenes from people's lives, unlike his contemporaries (for example, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Cezanne), he did not care at all about what happened to people, and very rarely painted genre scenes.

The main character in his paintings is light and its play. Monet painted his works quickly - until the light changed. After all, as the light changes, the meaning of the picture also changes. An image of the same motif (for example, one of the portals of Rouen Cathedral or a haystack) in different time each day gives a different impression and therefore presents different content. This principle became one of the most important in the art of subsequent decades.

"Boulevard des Capucines", 1873
Wikimedia Commons

Monet became a contemporary of everyone artistic directions late XIX- beginning of the 20th century. He said this: “Technology changes, but art remains the same: it is a free and emotional depiction of nature.”

The fate of the artist

Claude Monet was born in Paris into the family of a grocer. When the boy was five, the family moved to Normandy, to Le Havre. Claude didn't like school, he most spent his days by the sea, on the rocks or in the port. During lessons, the boy painted notebooks with caricatures of teachers and classmates. By the age of 15, Monet was known throughout Le Havre as an extremely talented caricaturist. They began to order portraits for him, and the teenager, without being confused, began to earn money from this, which shocked his respectable parents.

"Water Lilies", circa 1915

Thanks to the cartoons, the artist Eugene Boudin learned about Monet, who taught the young man a serious attitude towards painting and made him look at the world differently.

It was he who instilled in Claude the habit of writing from life and trusting his impressions. Boudin believed that one must “show extreme persistence in preserving the first impression, since it is the most correct.”

By the age of 18, Monet was finally convinced that he wanted to become an artist. Parents generally supported this idea, but could not help much with money. In Paris, where Claude went to study, he (not immediately, of course, there were years of rebellious refusal to work in the studio) gradually found himself a teacher and like-minded people.

After spending several years in England and Holland, the artist returned to his homeland in the early 1870s. By that time he was already married with children. Financial position It was difficult, the family lived in the village to cut costs. The situation changed by the early 1880s. The paintings began to make a profit, and the artist was able to buy a house in Giverny, where he spent the rest of his years.

Water lilies in the Orangerie Museum
1926. Oil, Canvas. Arthive

A few years before his death, Monet began to lose his sight - doctors diagnosed double cataracts. After undergoing two operations, Monet began to see ultraviolet as a blue or purple color, which is why his paintings acquired new colors. That's why on his recent works Monet painted lilies, which a healthy eye sees in shades of white, as bluish.

Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840 in the family of a grocer. Over the 86 years of his exciting life, the artist created about 2000 paintings. Monet's first painting teacher was Eugene Boudin, who immediately recognized the talent in the teenager. Monet later wrote to him: “I have not forgotten that you were the first who taught me to see and understand.”

Leaving school fine arts Paris, young Claude entered the free workshop of Charles Gleyre. There he met young artists: Basil, Sisley and Renoir - a mighty bunch, who founded the movement impressionism .

The name of their movement arose from light hand criticism "Le Charivari" by Louis Leroy, who entitled his feuilleton about the Salon of Rejects “Exhibition of the Impressionists”, taking the title of the painting as a basis "Impression. Rising Sun" by Claude Monet .

This note was dedicated to the exhibition of works from the so-called Salon of Rejects. It exhibited works rejected by the jury of the Paris Salon, the most authoritative exhibition of that time. Initially, this term was somewhat disparaging and indicated a corresponding attitude towards artists who painted in this manner. So, in his article, Leroy wrote: “Wallpaper, even those would look more complete than this “Impression”!” Just a few days after the article in Charivari, a well-meaning critic will write about the young painters: “If it is necessary to characterize their intentions in one word, then a new concept should be created - impressionists. They are impressionists in the sense that they convey not the landscape, but the impression caused by it.”

It is believed that the beginning of the search for the impressionists dates back to the 1860s, when young artists were no longer satisfied with the means and goals of academicism, and each of them independently looked for other ways to develop their style. In 1863 Edouard Manet exhibits a painting at the Salon of the Rejected "Breakfast on the Grass" and actively speaks at meetings of poets and artists in the Guerbois cafe, which was visited by all the future founders of the new movement.

The first major exhibition of the Impressionists took place in the studio of the photographer Nadar in the spring of 1874, and was called the “Rebel Exhibition”. In total, the exhibition featured 165 works by thirty artists. Including Monet's canvas - "Impression. Rising Sun" (Impression, soleil levant), painted in 1872 and now housed in the Marmotten Museum in Paris. It is worth noting that at that time the still lifes and landscapes of Monet and his associates were accused of rebellion, immorality and failure. The disapproving attitude of the bourgeois public and criticism towards artists (Impressionists) prevailed for years. All this is endlessly surprising: it is unclear what is immoral in the landscapes of Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, everyday scenes Edgar Degas, still lifes by Monet and Renoir.

As for “Impression, soleil levant,” the canvas was exhibited in the Marmottan Museum in Paris, from where it was stolen in 1985 along with other works by the artist, as well as paintings by Auguste Renoir and Berthe Morisot. Only five years later it was discovered and in 1991 it again took its place in the exhibition.