Vuillemot described the resulting effect as “smooth, fluid paint and low impasto, and lightly dragged and dry-brush strokes that skip across the surface of the painting.” He created a varied surface texture by juxtaposing multifarious brushstrokes. Monet developed the main compositional elements wet-on-wet after the under layers had dried. Conservator Kirk Vuillemot studied the version from Art Institute of Chicago and found that the painting consisted of two layers and was built up from a broadly applied lay-in. Monet sketched first and then transferred some of the drawing features onto the under layers of the paintings. Due to the handful of preliminary sketches Monet did for this series, we can surmise that he did not have an abundant window of time at the station. Similar to most contemporary artists, Monet did not paint entirely in the station: all of the paintings were finished in his studio. Though the station workers were in his way, he sat there patiently, like a hunter, brush at the ready, waiting for the minute when he could put paint to canvas." He wanted to show how they looked as they moved through the hot air that shimmered around them. “ was doggedly painting the departing locomotives. ![]() In 1889, critic Hugues Le Roux recalled Monet’s working process in the Gare Saint-Lazare:Ĭlaude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare, le train de Normandie, 1877, Paris When he sketched and started painting, his view must have been blocked by steam and smoke. Painting on site, Monet had to deal with the incoming and outgoing trains and crowds of passengers. In the 1870s, Monet rented a studio not far from the Gare Saint-Lazare and gained permission from the director of the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l'Ouest to paint from the station concourse and beside the track. In the 1870s, contemporary artists started to draw inspiration from trains, stations, and railways. One critic felt compelled to call the entire Impressionist movement “the School of the place de l’Europe,” which referred to Gare Saint-Lazare’s square. During the 1850s and 1860s, the station had expanded at an exponential rate due to industrialization, and it attracted contemporary painters including Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte. Gare Saint-Lazare station is the terminus of the first railway in Paris and one of the six largest terminuses in Paris, which opened in 1837. Illustration of the Gare Saint-Lazare in 1868 Today, the Gare Saint-Lazare paintings are scattered in institutions all over the world, including Musée d'Orsay, Fogg Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery, Musée Marmottan Monet, Pola Museum of Art, Lower Saxony State Museum, and other private collections. Monet finished the Gare Saint-Lazare series in the first half of 1877 and exhibited seven of the twelve paintings at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in the same year. ![]() This Impressionist series was deeply influenced by modernization and industrialization in the nineteenth century, presenting a busy train station in different times of a day. ![]() This was Monet's first series of paintings concentrating on a single theme. The series contains twelve paintings, all created in 1877 in Paris. The paintings depict the smoky interior of this railway station in varied atmospheric conditions and from various points of view. Gare Saint-Lazare is a series of oil paintings by the French artist Claude Monet.
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