Impression, Sunrise
The harbour at Le Havre in the morning haze. A critic mocked the title and called the group “Impressionists” – the name stuck.
The orange sun has the same lightness as the sky around it; in a greyscale image it almost disappears.
Claude Monet grew up in the port of Le Havre in Normandy. It was there that he painted Impression, Sunrise. The picture is dated 1872, but the dating has been debated. A study in 2014 compared the picture with data on tides, weather and the position of the sun and concluded that it was probably painted on the morning of 13 November 1872. Monet probably painted it from a hotel window overlooking the harbour.
The picture shows the harbour at dawn. Everything is wrapped in a blue-grey haze. In the foreground one or two small boats are being rowed. Further off are masts, cranes and smoking chimneys. A small, orange-red sun hangs low in the sky, casting a glittering reflection on the water. Forms and outlines are dissolved, and the picture is painted quickly with thin, loose brushstrokes. The dark boat in the foreground gives the picture depth, while the grey shapes in the background almost vanish.
The picture was shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in the spring of 1874, in the photographer Nadar’s former studio on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. The exhibition was organised by a group of artists who wanted to show their work outside the official Salon. Monet later said that he called the picture Impression when he was asked for a title for the catalogue. The other artists included Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne and Berthe Morisot.
The critic Louis Leroy wrote a satirical review in the newspaper Le Charivari. He used the title to mock the whole group, calling them “Impressionists”. The word stuck, and the artists began to use it themselves. In this way an entire movement was named after a single small painting.
The sun in the picture has almost the same lightness as the sky around it. If the picture is converted to black and white, it almost disappears. It is the colour, not the lightness, that makes the sun glow. This shows how Monet worked with colour to convey an impression of light rather than an exact likeness. The picture is small, about 48 by 63 centimetres.
The picture was bought early on by collectors. It later came to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris through a donation. In October 1985 it was stolen from the museum together with several other works. It was recovered in Corsica in 1990 and returned to the museum. The theft was one of the most widely reported art crimes in France in the 1980s.
Today Impression, Sunrise is considered one of the most important pictures in the history of art. It is a symbol of the ideas of Impressionism: painting what one sees at a particular moment, with light and atmosphere as the main subject. It has been shown in major exhibitions and often gives its name to Impressionist anniversaries. It has become the very emblem of the movement.