Urban Landscape. Impressionism

Le Gare Saint-Lazare. Claude Monet 1877

 This stunning urban landscape was depicted by Monet around 1877. It belongs to one of the most famous modern art movements: Impressionism. Style founded by Monet in his painting: "Impression, sunrise", first shown at the 1874 "Exhibition of the Impressionists".

Impressionism is considered to be the first modern movement in painting. Impressionist artists painted in the open air and focused on the effect of light  and colour.

Monet is also wellknown by his oil on canvas waterlilies and landscapes.

This artwork is also a landscape but an urban one, because after several years of painting in the countryside, Monet turned to urban landscapes searching new settings, longed to be considered a painter of modern life.

The Gare Saint-Lazare offered the ideal landscape for Monet. Through the use of different effects, he achieved his goal: the capture of the impression of the changing effect of light, movement and steam.

Monet apply the impressionist techniques here: he worked in the open air, choosing the Gare Saint-Lazare to bring into the canvas this new urban landscape. Instead on focusing on the metallic structure of the train station, he choses to highlight the changing effects that light creates on the metallic frame. Therefore, the train station, the workers and the travellers are not the main focus of the artwork but the light, the mist, the air and the impression they create.

Objects are blurred and there are not clear shapes but rather a bright medley of tints which blend in our eye,.

The artist offers here a revolutionary visión of a new urban landscape, what prevails here is the light not the objects. That´s why, in the beginning, artists belonging to this new movement were rejected and criticized.

From my point of view, Monet, has created here an unique artwork. This urban landscape is depicted in a way never seen before: the changing light creates new effects of colour, redefining the frame of the objects it illuminates.