Painting of the Week - Gare St. Lazare by Claude Monet

Claude Monet, Gare St. Lazare, 1877

Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) doesn't need much of an introduction. A founding member of the Impressionist group, his painting Impression: Sunrise gave the movement it's name. Or rather, a critic (I forget which one) hated the painting and their style so much he called the entire group "Impressionists" in a derogatory manner. Unfazed, Monet stayed dedicated to the Impressionist principles of painting outdoors (en plein air), and capturing different light conditions of the same scene.

This dedication to the cause meant that Monet created whole series of the same images over and over again - haystacks, lilypads, Rouen Cathedral, etc. The Gare St. Lazare was painted 11 times, and each one is a study in how the smoke and steam billow around the station and of the shadows falling from the glass ceiling onto the tracks below.

An amusing story was told by Renoir about Monet being allowed to paint in the Gare St. Lazare. To get a train to Rouen delayed by half an hour so as to produce the best light effects, Monet got dressed up in his best suit of clothes and told the station master he was a famous artist and had chosen the Gare St. Lazare over the bigger Gare du Nord because it had more character. The station master complied in halting the train and even put more coals in the engines to produce even more smoke and steam!