The Saint Lazare Station

The Saint Lazare Station. Claude Monet. 1877 C.E.Oil on canvas.

• Part of a series of more than a dozen
• Train station in Paris; Monet has been living in the city, suburban dweller; epitome of the modern, the new, the industrial. 
• We associate Monet with waterlilies, pastoral landscapes.
• Chimneys, modern railway bridges; completely embracing modernism. 
• Typically, in his paintings trees frame the canvas; here, it’s the modern architecture, the diagonal lines which recede and carry our eye back. 
• Play of light and color; entrapped space; steam plays against the sunlight above; no line or contours; we see everything dissipating; everything becomes pure light, color. 
• Monet chose to make an ugly location luminous, an extraordinary expression of the beauty of urban modern life. Example of impressionism. 
• Deep sea of steam and smoke that envelops the canvas
• A component in larger project of a dozen canvases which attempts to portray all facets of the Gare Saint-Lazare. 
• The paintings all have similar themes—including the play of light filtered through the smoke of the train shed, the billowing clouds of steam, and the locomotives that dominate the site. 
• Light is the dominant formal element in so many Impressionist paintings
• Rightfully been singled out as among the most impressive paintings of Impressionism.
•  Monet renders the steam with a range of blues, pinks, violets, tans, grays, whites, blacks, and yellows. 
• He depicts not just the steam and light—which fill the canvas—but also their effect on the site—apartments, bridges, locomotives, all of which dematerialize into a thick industrial haze.
• Monet includes workers, steam, and industrial machines; not just the station’s impressive facade. 
• Forms dissolve and dematerialize