Kai in Le Havre

The year was 1874. That spring a group of painters including Monet had shown their work together in Paris for the first time, and a critic, mocking one of Monet's hazy harbour views, coined the word Impressionists. That harbour was Le Havre, the port town where Monet had grown up. He went back in the autumn and set up above the Grand Quai, the main working wharf, looking down on the tangle of ships, cargo and dockhands rather than out at open water. He never quite finished it. The quick, loose handling that let him suggest a whole busy port without spelling out a single crate is what that new word was reaching for. It hangs today in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.