Impressionism: Claude Monet\'s Impressions of a Sunrise

Impressionism: Claude Monet's Impressions of a Sunrise

The word 'impressionniste' was first used to describe Claude Monet and his group of artists when the word appeared in the Paris art publication the Charivari on April 25, 1874. Louis Leroy sneered that Claude Monet's painting "Impression Sunrise" was merely an impression with a brush, not a true work of painting. (Pioch, "Impressionism," 2004) Yet although the phrase "impressionist" was used in a derrogatory fashion to describe what would become a seminal landscape paintin of 20th century art, long after Leroy himself was forgotte, the painting "Impressions: soleil levant," (to use the French term) should not be seen merely as embodying the impressionist movement. It is also a unique work of the artist.

Art critic Robert Herbert has called Monet's work a deepening of Manet's previous, flatter renditions of aristocratic and suburban Paris. Rather than "modern," and extroverted in its style, like Manet's portraits of nudes in harsher brushstrokes, Monet's landscape work such as "Impression: Sunrise" was dreamlike and internal in its scole. (Herbert, p. 28) Although the broad, tree-lined boulevards and large parks that filled the French city with air and light gave inspiration to many of the impressionists, before and after Money, as leisure became a prime concern of the middle class, the subjects of Monet's work turned away from such various forms of middle class entertainment so beloved by the other impressionists. Degas and Renoir's Impressionist paintings featured the social life that developed in cafes such as concerts, ballet, horseracing, picnicking, boating. But Monet was more apt to focus light and nature, light and color, sunlit fields and shimmering waterscapes rather than bustling city views and social or domestic scenes. Monet was more concerned about what light and shadow said about his internal life, and more concerned about light than subject choice (Kelder, p. 75)

Thus, Monet's formative work set the tone for criticism of the Impressionists, and created the movement's focus on orginary life and light, but should not be seen as embodying the period alone -- it is also characteristic of the individual artist. Even the use of the term 'impressionist' was controversial within the movement. The critical and descriptive word "impressionist" was taken up with pride by Monet and his followers. Monet used this term to call the next exhibit of the impressionists, called the Exposition des Impressionnistes because he was proud that his work gave impressions of inner life, rather than outer reality. When it was adopted by the artists many disliked the label and it was dropped from two of the subsequent exhibitions as a result of disagreements. (Pioch, "Impressionism," 2004)