Impression Sunrise

What can be said about the painting that lend its name to the whole impressionist movement? One of the most iconic images of the art world, with an eternal appeal? Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise is all that and more. Painted in 1872 and showing the entrance to the harbor in Le Havre, Impression Sunrise was first exhibited in Paris  in 1874 in what was to be the first showing by the impressionists. It was also here that art critic Louis Leroy, not to impressed with what was on display, titled his review "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", more to mock than to salute. However, the artists themselves liked the term and held on to it.

Monet himself said the following about the painting and its name:

“Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in Le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground....They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn't really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: 'Put Impression”.

It is often commented that the sun seems almost alive in Impression Sunrise; that the painting has an unreal quality that is hard to define. This effect comes from a peculiar result of the brightness employed in the painting. The sun and the clouds around it share the same brightness. In fact, if you take a black and white copy of the painting, the sun is not visible at all. In the human brain, the older part of the brain that we share with other mammals has a visual that only registers luminance and not color. That makes the sun invisible to that part of our brain. However, the newer part of the visual cortex, found only in humans and primates, can perceive colors. It is this conflict between these two parts of our brain that gives this living quality to the work.

Impression Sunrise can today be found on display at the Musée Marmottan in Paris.