Claude Monet (1840-1926) caused a stir – to say impression would be an easy joke – with his vision of a sunrise in the port of Le Havre precisely titled Impression. Rising Sun (1872). He had given his name to the impressionist movement. But he also shocked art fans and non-artists three years later, when he painted the work that appears below these lines, a close-up of a train stopped in the snow at the Argenteuil station. A locomotive. It was not as sensational as the moving trains that made viewers flee in terror from the cinematographer’s first sessions, but it was something barely seen.
The appearance of the steam train was one of the innovations that helped the Impressionists in their determination to paint en plein air, one of the characteristics of the movement, although it must be said that it was not exclusive to them: since the 17th century, the masters had encouraged his students to leave their studies and air out, something that was not very comfortable at that time, innovations such as folding easels would have to arrive, which seem obvious but were not, metal tubes for colors, caps screw-on, another obvious one but it was a great invention for painters, because previous pig bladders with pressure caps did not always close hermetically… and steam trains.
Thanks to them, artists began to move more easily: the train facilitated access to the towns of the Seine Valley: Asnières, Argenteuil, Gennevilliers, Chatou, Bougival. Claude Monet, who had painted his cardinal Impression from a Window, and we do not blame him, soon became a regular at the Saint-Lazare station, which still continues to link Paris with Normandy, so common that the station itself would star in 1877 one of his first series, which over the years would be expanded to include the haystacks (1890-1891), the Norman cliffs of Étretat (1883-1885), Rouen Cathedral (1892-1895), the Houses of Parliament in London (1899 -1904), water lilies from 1900, Venice, wisteria…
His perspective had changed, now the important thing was not the brush strokes, the exploration of the moment, the impression. The landscapes and seascapes, the fields of flowers and figures as unmistakably impressionistic as the walk through Argenteuil along these lines gave way to his investigations about light, its changes throughout the day, the seasons, the meteorological phenomena, the way to capture all of this.
Monet was not the only Impressionist who paid tribute to the technological innovations of his time in the figure of the train, but the Norman painter had additional reasons to be grateful to this means of transport: it was while he was observing the landscape between Bonnières from his carriage. and Vernon when he observed the nuances of the sun on the banks of the Seine, which led him to further investigate the area and discover the house that would become his refuge in Giverny and the garden that constitutes his great work as much as his paintings. Dazzled by the explosion of colors of the flowers, the exuberance of plants and trees, he began the production that would prove Cézanne right, when he said that “Monet is only an eye… but what an eye, by God!”
The eyes. His blessing and his punishment. The Monet who had finally found economic stability, who had created a small Eden around him, who had been able to marry his second wife, began to lose vision, in 1915 he had difficulty distinguishing shades: “He no longer perceived colors.” with the same intensity. […] the reds seemed murky to me,” the artist went on to say. It is the time of the water lilies and wisteria, painted in their details to the point of exhaustion and until they become almost unrecognizable. Because of his blindness problems, with a cataract operation that finally restored his sight but not his spirit? For an extreme synthesis of his painting? The result leaves people with their mouths open even today.
All these stages, like the three paintings on this page, will be part of the exhibition that can be seen in Madrid thanks to the collaboration between the CentroCentro room, the Marmottan-Monet museum in Paris, provider of the works, and the organization Arthemisia . Many of the paintings are part of the group of works that the artist decided to keep with him until his death in Giverny. This report has been prepared with the texts of the exhibition catalogue.
Monet. Masterpieces from the Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris. CenterCenter. Madrid. www.monetmadrid.com. From September 21 to February 25
