La Gare Saint-Lazare

In 1877 Monet went to the railway director of the Gare Saint-Lazare and asked to paint inside the station, the busy terminus that sent trains west out of Paris towards the suburbs where the Impressionists worked. He got his way completely. Platforms were cleared and trains were held so the light and steam would sit as he wanted, and in a few months he made 12 canvases of the same iron-and-glass shed. This is one of them. Engines stand under the great glazed roof while their smoke rises and mixes with the winter sky, half dissolving the hard architecture behind it. He showed several of the series at the Impressionist exhibition that April.