Discernment: Impression, Sunrise

Title: Impression, Sunrise

Date: 1872

Nationality: France

Creator: Claude Monet

Medium: Painting

In the midst of the Romantic era, a handful of French artists found themselves liberated from the confines of their studios by the invention of oil paints stored in tubes and free to create their paintings in the midst of the outside world.  In their new environment, they were exposed to the changing light of day and became “obsessed with capturing the moment” (Strong and Davis 664).  Where the paintings of previous eras emphasized message, clarity, technicality, and emotion, Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, became the staple of the Impressionist movement as a brilliant example of a newly found way to perceive the world—the “indistinct” and “instantaneous” nature of a single moment (Strong and Davis 664).  Changing light and the constantly shifting perception of nature was not a new phenomenon of the day—human experience did not change in the second half of the 19^th century—yet no one in Europe had been sensitive enough to discern these aspects of experience until the Parisian impressionists stumbled serendipitously out of the shadows.  In the world around us, there is much we take no notice of at all, Impression, Sunrise demonstrates the profundity of what goes ignored for ages. 

Image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression,_Sunrise