Impression, Sunrise

In the spring of 1874, a group of painters in Paris who kept getting turned away by the official Salon decided to rent a photographer's studio and show their work themselves. Monet hung this small, hazy view of the harbour at Le Havre, his home town, where the morning mist blurs the masts and cranes and one loose smear of orange sun sits on the grey water. When someone pressed him for a title, he said it could hardly pass for a view of Le Havre, so call it an impression. A critic named Louis Leroy seized on that word. Writing for a satirical paper, he mocked the whole show as the work of impressionists, sneering that the painting was less finished than wallpaper. The insult stuck, but not the way he meant it. The painters took the name for themselves, and it is the one we still use. It fits this canvas exactly, because Monet is not describing the port so much as the few minutes of light on it. If you look for solid ships and buildings you will not really find them, only the sensation of a cold harbour waking up. That orange sun, by the way, is barely brighter than the grey sky around it, which is part of why it seems to glow.