Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

and smoke it emits, rumbles into the station. In the background haze

are the tall buildings that were becoming a major component of the

Parisian landscape. Monet’s agitated paint application contributes to

the sense of energy and conveys the atmosphere of urban life.

Georges Rivière (1855–1943), a critic and friend of some of the

Impressionists, saw this painting in the third Impressionist exhibi-

tion and recorded the essence of what Monet had tried to achieve:

Like a fiery steed, stimulated rather than exhausted by the long trek

that it has only just finished, [the locomotive] tosses its mane of

smoke, which lashes the glass roof of

the main hall....We see the vast and

manic movements at the station where

the ground shakes with every turn of the

wheel. The platforms are sticky with soot,

and the air is full of that bitter scent ex-

uded by burning coal. As we look at this

magnificent picture, we are overcome by

the same feelings as if we were really there,

and these feelings are perhaps even more

powerful, because in the picture the artist

has conveyed his own feelings as well.^4

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE Other Impressionists also repre-

sented facets of city life, although not always using Monet’s impres-

sionistic brush strokes. The setting ofParis: A Rainy Day(FIG. 31-5)

by Gustave Caillebotte(1849–1893) is a junction of spacious

boulevards that resulted from the redesigning of Paris that began in

1852. The city’s population had reached nearly 1.5 million by midcen-
      tury. To accommodate this congregation of humanity—and to facili-
      tate the movement of troops in the event of another revolution—
      Napoleon III ordered Paris rebuilt. The emperor named Baron
      Georges Haussmann (1809–1891), a city superintendent, to oversee
      the entire project. In addition to new wa-
      ter and sewer systems, street lighting, and
      new residential and commercial build-
      ings, a major component of the new
      Paris was the creation of the wide, open
      boulevards seen in Caillebotte’s painting.
      These great avenues, whose construction
      caused the demolition of thousands of
      old buildings and streets, transformed
      medieval Paris into the present modern
      city, with its superb vistas and wide unin-
      terrupted arteries for the flow of vehic-
      ular and pedestrian traffic. Caillebotte
      chose to focus on these markers of the
      city’s rapid urbanization.

31-4Claude Monet,Saint-Lazare

Train Station,1877. Oil on canvas,

2  5 – –^34   3  5 . Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Impressionist canvas surfaces are incom-

prehensible at close range, but the eye

fuses the brush strokes at a distance.

Monet’s agitated application of paint

contributes to the sense of energy in

this urban scene.

31-5Gustave Caillebotte,Paris:

A Rainy Day,1877. Oil on canvas,

6  9  9  9 . Art Institute of Chicago,

Chicago (Worcester Fund).

Although Caillebotte did not use Impres-

sionistic broken brush strokes, the seem-

ingly randomly placed figures and the

arbitrary cropping of the vista suggest

the transitory nature of modern life.

1 ft.

1 ft.

Impressionism 825