Paris was a new city. The boulevards, which before were cramped and narrow, had been widened, and light came down to the streets where a new class of citizens strolled in the light: those men and women nurtured by a revolution of smoke and steam and speed. Paris moved faster, the trains sped in and out of the city, from the countryside to the factory boroughs where the machines raced ever faster, and the hands struggled to keep up. The Parisians only saw progress. The wars were elsewhere, yes, but in the city, so far away from those dreadful conflicts, innovation could improve the lives of everyone. Darkness and suffering, however, remained deep within Paris’s foundations. Smoke and grit poured out of machines and factories until soot covered the ground. Claude Monet, a revolutionary in the new age of impressionism, went to the Gare St-Lazare train station with his easel. He took the soot, the grit, the smoke, the bustle of the people, the speed of the trains, and he painted the light.Monet had recently moved to Paris, renting out a small flat located nearby the train station. In 1877, he began an exhibition that showcased a project in which he had painted a series of urban landscapes of the train station. Few noticed how brilliantly he had depicted Paris, a city of movement and color. One in particular, which confronts the train straight-on, tells the story of Paris as it transitioned into a new age.
At first, one notices the centermost train, a dark, sulking mass, concerned only with efficiency and power, appearing to have just pulled into the station. One can sense the celebration of noise as the train eases onto to the platform. It symbolized progress at the time, a machine that, like its human creators, would always move forward, each generation steadily progressing. That Monet would contrast this train with the light steam suggests that the train’s power is fragile, which makes us consider whether Monet felt the same about humanity’s onward march. Like the train, could progress be fragile? In the late 19th century, discoveries of a wave-particle duality in light furthered the uncertainty over whether human reason could triumph nature. Following this interpretation, the painting proves remarkably prophetic, foreshadowing World War I, a time when cynicism and pessimism dampened progress, when onlookers realized that innovation and science could destroy optimism just as easily as it could create it.
While the train lacks visual humility, the steam, certainly a gross inefficiency and a waste, surrounds the train in a thick haze. It turns the train into a mirage that flickers on and off in the afternoon light. While the Parisians on the right commend the brutal strength of such an innovation, demonstrating the intellectual might of the human race, Monet simply admires the luster of the landscape. To suggest that light and color could be the subject of a painting would have appalled the Salon, the main art institution of Paris. Such a focus would be an impression, not a painting. Yet Monet’s impression reflects a culture of constant movement and fluctuations, where the people shunned inefficiency. Leisure, a lack of movement, was for the poor, the inhibited, never for the workers, the entrepreneurs, and the artists. The market had to be competitive. The art had to be grand and emotional, so full of triumph and loss that it frightened its audience.
Monet’s canvas, however, was small, only what he could fit on his wooden easel, which makes us consider the values of Monet. Even though his colors were alive and vibrant, his art was unimposing. At the time, his painting would not have looked that impressive in the Salon galleries, which took on the quality of an overpacked warehouse. This suggests that Monet considered a special audience who did not follow the crowds and who did not think that beauty resided in that which is easily seen. Monet reached out to those who took the extra time to admire what others only saw as ordinary: steam rising from the train or lilies in a pond.
Meanwhile, the people become mere suggestions in the steam. While in other paintings common at the Salon, where the people were depicted as heroes, conquerers, or lovers, the people in this painting remain silent. Their faces are not revealed. They take no pose. Indeed, we see them as Monet saw them: a speculative and unknown people. They are not heroes, conquerers, or lovers. They have no historical significance. Yet Monet portrays them as an integral part of a much greater picture, as cogs keeping the organs of the city alive. Like the train, the steam overpowers them. The urbanization so coveted by the middle class made the people feel small. No one person could control such a vast city, so many, those wealthy enough, retreated to the country side where they maintained some minor control of the land. Even with their lavish hats and sumptuous clothes, the new class of people feared insignificance; they admired the paintings that portrayed them as strong and meaningful and rejected anything different. Monet was scorned for revealing that the people were specks in the steam.
But by doing so, he revealed human nature. To feel meaningful in the context ofsuch a grand universe remains our goal; hence, we strive for accomplishments that will enhance our worth: we fight, conquer, build and destroy. This painting reminds us that we can never be separated from the canvas. Although we are all specks in the steam, our colors hidden from view, Monet reminds us of those moments when we feel a part of something larger than ourselves.
Above the steam, the grid iron is sturdy. The triangles and squares retain their mathematical formality that contrasts with the chaotic and spiraling steam. By surrounding the scene with a geometrical roof, Monet suggests the rigidness that underlies much of Paris. For much of the 19th century, Paris was tense with revolution; however, stability had returned as both the middle and working classes prospered. The roof functions as the struts upon which formality and order rely; they hold in the chaos of the steam, the randomness of the people; they mark a beginning and an end; they give direction. But Monet observes differently. He understands that light and color have no direction, for they flicker in and out of reality like flame on a candle. Instead of attempting to control the color with delicate strokes like so many who adhered to the Salon, Monet let his audience see the paint, and by doing so captured a more accurate reality.
Life, as Monet saw it, was change. Change drove life towards new avenues, and the artist must paint this transition with great care, always guarding against perfection that would stifle change. On the other hand, mistakes and failure indicate the variation that invites new perspectives, and so Monet allowed the mistakes: he put the wrong colors, and he ignored all lines and contour. He let his brush dance on the canvas, his eyes finding the color.
Paris, too, was change. Change drove the working-class urbanites towards the factories in search of a better life; it powered the locomotive era and ushered in the steel industry. The people had to adapt quickly, finding niches among the city boroughs. But the brushstrokes of Monet, which look as if they could be blown away, reveal that the people lacked permanence, shifting jobs to find a foothold in the city. Although they had been uprooted and forced to the city by change, they could, as Monet suggests, always return to the train station, where they could choose a new route to travel. Somehow, we always return to the train station, deciding every day which train we desire to travel, until our train continues on its track, the train station receding ever farther away into the distance.
Monet captured the momentary, the infinitesimal amount of time in which reality transitions. An observer of this painting realizes that seeing is simply a series of flashes of light and color strung together, interpreted by the mind into emotion and thought. Looking at this painting, Monet makes me consider those brief moments before my mind attaches meaning, when no thought is given to the context or shapes, when I truly see the world unhindered of any speculation and simply admire the light.
