Explore Sunrise (Marine)

Read About This Painting by Claude Monet

Using the muted palette of dawn, Claude Monet portrays the industrial seaport of Le Havre on the northern coast of France. The brilliant orange rising sun glimmers in the damp air and dances on the gentle rippling water of blues and greens. On the left, through a cool haze, pack boats billow smoke. Sunrise (Marine) represents Monet’s plein air or “outdoor,” approach to painting.

The informal and spontaneous brushstrokes establish this painting as one of the first works, along with Impression: Sunrise, to be painted in the Impressionist style that made Monet famous. The ephemeral play of light, water, and air would remain his subject for the rest of his career.

Impressionist painters never officially linked their artistic movement to the science of their time, but certain scientific discoveries echoed their beliefs about color. Scientists were interested in the connections between white light, the color spectrum (like the rainbow), and the effects on the human eye. Impressionist painters used a new, bold range of artificially made colors to reproduce the world as they saw it.

In the mid-nineteenth century, chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul published his “law of simultaneous color.” It documented the powerful optical effects created when complementary colors (opposite colors on the color wheel) are placed next to each other. Chevreul also designed a color circle to show the relationships between colors. Colors on the blue side are called “cool” colors and appear to recede in space. Colors on the red side are “warm” colors and seem to advance. Monet used complementary colors applied in short, visible slashes of paint, to create vibrant visual effects that gave the impression of the light and atmosphere he observed.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

• Describe what you see in this painting.

• What colors do you see in this painting?

• What can you see reflected in the water? What colors are used to paint the water? What colors show reflections? What colors show the light?

• Where do you see the complementary colors orange and blue?

• Look closely at the visible brushstrokes that make up this painting. What kinds of marks did the artist make with his paintbrush to create the water? What kinds of marks did he use to create the sky? Where in the painting do you notice the different kinds of marks?

A French term meaning painting outdoors in natural light instead of in a studio.

In late 19th-century France, some artists painted pictures that look like they were quickly sketched, using lots of small dots and strokes of color to create scenes that capture feelings and moments, like the way sunlight looks on water or the colors of a garden.