Monet and Degas ...........................................................................

Lecture 43

We’re going to continue looking at the works of Monet today, and then

continue with the paintings of Edgar Degas.

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one of the Impressionists, not even the politically engaged Pissarro,
touched on the subject of Paris in the aftermath of the Commune.
In a sense, the closest Monet came to doing so was in a pair of
remarkable and thrilling paintings that he made on the same day, one of
which is The Rue Montorgeuil, Paris, Celebration of June 30, 1878 (1878).
This was the ¿ rst national celebration since the crisis of 1870–1871, held in
conjunction with the World’s Fair that had opened that spring. In looking at
this painting, we can feel the ecstatic release of the pent-up emotions that
must have simmered for seven years.

Monet and his contemporaries found compelling subject matter in the city,
especially the café life and the world of entertainment, as well as the new
architecture that followed the construction of the grand boulevards built
during the Second Empire and the nearby countryside and coast, easily
reached on the new railroads. We see, for example, the La Gare Saint-Lazare
(Arrival of a Train) (1877), by Monet. The Saint-Lazare railroad station
perfectly typi¿ es the new subject matter, because it is modern architecture,
built to accommodate the modern railroad, which gave access to the world
beyond Paris. Striking in this painting is the steel-and-glass shed, obscured
by the steam of the train entering the station. In a series of paintings of the
station, Monet plays with the contrast between the insubstantial—steam—
and the solid, modern architecture.

This series on La Gare Saint-Lazare evolved, but it was not initially conceived
as a series in the way that Monet would later systematically plan them. In the
1890s, he thoroughly explored the potential of painting in series. We see here
three examples. The ¿ rst is Haystacks, End of Summer (1891). Around 1880,
the concentration on light in Impressionist painting threatened to overwhelm
the substance of its subjects. Monet found a solution to this problem in his
series by having an object serve as the composition of the painting. Here,