How Claude Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” Sparked an Art Revolution

A century after his death at his home in Giverny, Claude Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise still stands as a cornerstone of the Impressionist movement he helped to create.

Frustrated by repeated rejections from the conservative Salon de Paris, Claude Monet joined forces with a group of like-minded rule-breakers, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro to host an exhibition that introduced the world to Impressionism.

In April 1874, this new collective of 31 artists established La Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs, etc. (the Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, etc) and decided to do something radical.

In a direct challenge to the elitist jury system that repeatedly excluded them from the annual Parisian state-sponsored Salon exhibition that favored traditional canvases, this collective of artists held their own exhibition that championed a bold, new vision of art.

Hosted with the help of famous French photographer, Felix Nadar, from his 35 Boulevard des Capucines studio, it would come to be known as the Impressionist Exhibition, but failed to mount serious opposition to the more established Salon.

Opening two weeks before the Salon of 1874 and determined to prove the exhibition wasn’t just another Salon des Refusés, the exhibition of works rejected by the Salon jury, the Impressionist Exhibition staged the show on their terms, with one reviewer noting that “artfully positioned gas lighting will enable art lovers whose business occupies them all through the day to come and examine (all through the evening) the artworks of the modern generation”.

For all its innovation, the exhibition failed to draw a significant crowd, attracting just 3,500 visitors, compared to the 400,000 that visited the Salon of 1874. Financially, it fared no better, as the Société anonyme failed to turn a profit and ended up owing over 3,700 francs (approximately $2,300 today) by the time the exhibition closed its doors.

Worse, it barely made headlines in any reputable newspapers and reviews were confined to left-wing and republican publications, as the conservative press largely avoided platforming the rebels who had chosen to oppose official arts policy.

The most influential review came from the art critic and satirist Louis Leroy in Le Charivari. His article, The Exhibition of the Impressionists, coined the term Impressionism, which he said was inspired by Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. The artists enthusiastically embraced their new title.

“Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more labored than its seascape,” read Leroy’s review as he imagined a pair of skeptical viewers reacting to seeing Monet’s painting for the first time. Intended to be just as much of a spoof of the reactions of conservative academic painters to the Impressionists as it was a mockery of Impressionists themselves, the name stuck.

“They asked me for a title”

Depicting a hazy morning scene at the port of Le Havre, where Monet was raised and developed a love of drawing, the painting’s title would come to define an exciting new approach to modern art. Its conception was for more haphazard though, as Monet claimed the title came about under pressure. “They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn’t really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said, ‘Put Impression.'”

One of a series of six paintings depicting the port at Le Havre at dawn, day, dusk, and dark, and from a variety of different viewpoints, Impression, Sunrise became the most famous in the series after it was shown at the exhibition.

And yet, despite its influence and modern reputation for sowing the seeds of Impressionism and lending the movement its name, the painting itself isn’t a particularly good reference point for the techniques that would later come to define the movement.

Monet’s colors are restrained and the paint is applied in thin washes compared to the brushstrokes of contrasting colors typical of Impressionism, while the only use of impasto is visible in the reflected sunlight on the water. It’s certainly an atmospheric painting that perhaps shares the spirit of JMW Turner’s art more than it does that analytical approach of his contemporaries Degas, Cézanne, and Pissarro. The Fighting Temeraire wouldn’t look out of place if it were to be towed into the scene.

It’s the ‘sketchy’ nature of the painting that ties it most with Impressionism and one of the techniques that made it so revolutionary to audiences accustomed to the strict realism that dominated art of the period, and can even be seen in Monet’s The Luncheon (1868–69), which was also exhibited alongside Boulevard des Capucines (1873), Fishing Boats Leaving the Port of Le Havre (1874), and Poppies at Argenteuil (1873).

Though underappreciated by its Parisian audience in 1874, the exhibition nonetheless revealed paintings that today decorate museums around the world. Paul Cézanne’s The Hanged Man’s House (1873) is today in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Degas’ The Dancing Class (1871) is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Pissarro’s Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes (1872) is in National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and you can find Renoir’s La Loge, (The Theatre Box) (1874) hanging in the Courtauld Gallery, London.

A second Impressionist exhibition followed in 1876, then another in 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, and an eighth and final show in 1886 that capped the rise of a rebellious fringe movement into one of the most celebrated chapters in art history.

Capturing Fleeting Moments

In 1883, Monet and his family rented a house in Giverny, 50 miles northwest of Paris in the region of Normandy. And it was in Giverny that commercial success caught up with Monet’s innovation after years of hardship, and gave him the money to develop the flower garden that would become the main focus of his artistic production in the last 31 years of his life.

The gardens became Monet’s greatest muse and inspired him to produce a series of around 250 oil paintings on the subject. His vast, immersive canvases had no horizon, no fixed perspective, and forced viewers to dive into the color, light, and reflection of the garden that he so adored.

Even as cataracts obscured his vision later in life, Monet’s determination to capture a moment in his garden can be traced back to his swift attempt to capture a fleeting moment in the harbor at Le Havre.

The notion was alien to viewers accustomed to seeing realistic depictions of grand military encounters and historical scenes, like Jacques-Louis David’s Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard Pass (1802).

The idea of creating an artwork that was as much about the perception or impression of a scene, as it was about how the scene actually looked in real life was radical and decades ahead of its time. Monet and the band of Impressionists cracked open the door for modern art, clearing the way for experimentation, abstraction, and personal expression. And for that, Monet’s determination to capture an impression of Le Havre harbor deserves our collective perception of appreciation.