Claude Monet Impression: Sunrise

Week 3 Post 3: Impressionism with Formal Analysis

The work from which Impressionism got its name seems an appropriate place to start with in a formal analysis of this painting from 1872 by Claude Monet.  Monet’s aim was to create a style that involved using color to represent what he saw.  He was not interested in fine detail because he wanted his painting to contain a slice of time in a particular location and recreate the colors and mood of a moment that could never happen again.   This spontaneity and sense of immediacy is a hallmark of Impressionist painting.  Landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes had been popular long before the Impressionist style arose but the invention of collapsible metal tubes containing premixed oil paints gave artists a way to take their materials with them and set up a small portable easel in any location.  Critics of the time thought that the style had an unfinished, unpolished look and especially derided the uneven thickness of paint application. visible brushwork and the lack of detail because it seemed to them as if the artist was making a rough oil paint sketch in the field to take back to the studio to finish later.  Painters of this era were greatly influenced by photography especially when it came to cropping and composition.  A photograph using techniques available at the time could contain a great deal of realistic detail but the necessarily long exposure times gave many shots a contrived look since any movement would show up as an indistinct blur.  If paintings and photographs had to compete as art forms for the attention of the public in the 19^th century the technologically inclined might prefer photography but paintings had one great advantage in the opinions most people- they had color.  Monet was quite right in choosing a style that emphasized the spontaneous hues and textures of differing moods and sense of movement through time and space that the photographs of the time could not portray.

That said, the palette of colors for Impression: Sunrise is actually quite restrained.   Blues and oranges dominate with the tones and shades of the blue used throughout and the orange sun and color in the water and sky used as a contrasting accent.  The entire painting looks as though it has been painted using only five tubes of oil color:  blue, orange, white, black and perhaps a little yellow.  The browns of the clouds in the sunrise could be achieved by mixing blue and orange.  The oil pigments are applied in a painterly manner with very visible brush strokes which are sometimes employed in daubs of considerable thickness to add a textural quality impossible with photography.  The texture is especially apparent in the vertical line of the reflection of the rising sun on the water.  The ships and trees in the background are sketched in as foggy, blue shapes which blend into each other and yet are identifiable.  Every brush stroke has the purpose of creating the mood of the piece and providing just enough definition to keep the work from abstraction. 

The capture of a moment in time is provided by implied color shifts, textural elements and elements in the composition.  Compared to other shapes in the work the sun stands out as a regular geometric circle rising from the early morning fog.  It is a focal point which is emphasized by the reflection in the water and the echoing hue of the sky.  Except for the Sun’s reflection most of the lines in the painting are provided by the small boats in the foreground, the blurry horizontal line made by the larger ships with the background trees and the raked lines of the clouds lead the eye toward a point on the left side about two-thirds up from the bottom. The eye then travels upward and back around to the sun.   As the water ripples and the sunlight reflects from it we get a sense of movement.  Movement is also supplied in the angle up to the horizon line made by the small boats and the temporary arrangement of cloud lines.  We get a real feeling that this water traffic is transitory and that in a few minutes the boats will be in a different location, the sun will be higher in the sky, the clouds will move away and the colors will change from the blues and oranges of morning to the blues, greens and yellows of full daylight.  Photography could capture this scene but shooting into the sun usually means that the rest of the visual elements would be underexposed or the harsh lines of ships and docks would be more apparent.   Much of the beauty of the scene would be lost without the element of color.  Monet and other Impressionists were interested in creating beauty rather than in reproducing ugliness.  A photographer might be limited to harsh reality but an impressionist work allows us to see the transitory beauty of a real setting.