Description
Contrary to classical painting, this painting does not tell any story, it is simply a snapshot of reality the way a photographer might take it , without any religious, mythological or costumbrist content. In this sense, we can consider it as anti-literary , with the true protagonist being light.
This famous painting was created from a scene in the port of Le Havre. Monet depicts a mist, which provides a misty background to the piece set in the French port. The orange and yellow tones contrast brilliantly with the dark glasses, where little to no detail is immediately visible to the public. It is striking and candid work showing the smaller boats in the foreground almost propelled by the movement of the water. Monet achieves the effect by separate brush strokes that also show various "scintillating" colors on the sea.
From April 15 to May 15, 1874 Monet exhibited his work together with Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and some thirty other artists. They organized their exhibition on their own, since they used to be rejected at the Paris Salon. Most of the visitors were disgusted and even outraged by the like. The Monet print enjoyed great attention and some visitors even claimed that they were completely unable to recognize what was shown.
A critic who attended the exhibition, M. Louis Leroy, wrote a now famous article in Le Charivari in which he used the term "Impressionist" based on the title of this painting. Even though Leroy had used the word in a derisive way, the group decided to adopt it and painters like Renoir and Degas were happy to be called Impressionists.
Despite its notoriety, the painting is somewhat atypical of Monet's own work from this period and of impressionism in general. It shows little of the impressionist treatment of light and colour. The colors are very restrained and the paint is applied not in discreet strokes of contrasting colors but in very fine washes. In some places, the canvas is even visible and the only use of the impasto is in the representation of sunlight reflected on the water. The painting is more atmospheric than analytical and has a somewhat similar spirit to Turner's works. However, it illustrates particularly well one of the features of an impressionist painting that was thought to be so revolutionary.
The technique is very "schematic" and would have been seen as a preliminary study for a painting rather than a finished work suitable for exhibition. Monet himself saw the work as unfinished, and it was for that reason that he adopted the title 'Print' to distinguish it from works like his other view of Le Havre in the same exhibition, although this one too lacks the expected finish. In this work, Monet kept detail to a minimum: the shipyards in the tiled background are merely suggested by a few brush strokes, as are the ships in the foreground. The ensemble represents the artist's quick attempt to capture a fleeting moment. The highly visible, almost abstract technique attracts almost more attention than the subject matter itself, a notion then totally alien to viewers.
An interesting curiosity about this painting is that the original title of the work was simply "Impression", but the art critic Louis Leroy, seeing the painting at an exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874, mocked it in his review of the painting. exhibition, naming his review "The Impressionists' Exhibition". In his review, Leroy referred to Monet's work as "Impression, by God, can't critics throw a bucket of green paint in your face?", thus giving rise to the painting's current title.
The painting shows a maritime landscape in the port of Le Havre, in the north of France, and is characterized by a series of loose and rapid brushstrokes that create a misty and ephemeral atmosphere. Monet was more interested in capturing the visual sensations and effects of natural light than in representing reality as seen. This was one of the hallmarks of the Impressionist movement and "Rising Sun Print" is one of the best representations of this technique.
Today, Impression of the Rising Sun is considered as the most prominent and recognized impressionist painting on the planet, along with Van Gogh's famous painting of night stars .
Impression, Sunrise is ranked no. 8 on the list of famous paintings