impression sunrise claude monet analysis

Impression, Sunrise is not only significant for its beauty – with its depiction of a bright orange sun rising above a hazy sea – but for the name it gave to impressionism. It also established that the picture depicts sunrise, not sunset – a matter that had divided art historians. The extended exhibition length is largely a bid to highlight research that the Musée Marmottan Monet conducted on the painting in 2014, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of its opening.Īmong other things, Marmottan Monet has pinpointed the exact location of the view of the port of Le Havre that Monet painted in Impression, Sunrise. The work, however, will be on show in Canberra for almost triple that time in a new 650 sq m space reserved for temporary exhibitions. Musée Marmottan Monet, owners of the largest Monet collection in the world, rarely loan out Impression, Sunrise – and usually only for a month at a time. View image in fullscreen ‘It is modest in scale but its role and its position in art history is enormous’: Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872). You get this sense of an early morning moment through fleeting bits of colour and brushstrokes.” The shadowy stacks of boats and industry as the sun is rising. That’s the mastery of Monet: these simple brush strokes, these very carefully applied bits of raw colour. “I think it’s like a little exquisite jewel – it just sucks you in. “Australian audiences have a good knowledge of Impressionism, but this is the missing part of the puzzle.” “It is modest in scale but its role and its position in art history is enormous,” says NGA director Nick Mitzevich. The centrepiece, however, is 1872’s Impression, Sunrise – the image that inadvertently gave the impressionists their name.

It also shows later works of the French master including Haystacks, Midday (1890) and Waterlillies (1914-17), both of which are in the NGA collection. Monet: Impression Sunrise, which opened this week at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), tracks Monet’s early inspirations and influences. Now his most famous painting of all – Impression, Soleil Levant or Impression, Sunrise – is being shown in the southern hemisphere for the first time.

Impression sunrise claude monet analysis