Monet went to the train station to find the future. He didn't want to paint a mountain -- he wanted to paint the steam and the noise of the industrial age. He actually convinced the station master to hold the trains so the engines would belch out more smoke for his canvases. It was a bold and modern move. He was treating the station like a cathedral of the new world.
The painting is a riot of blue and white steam. You can see the dark shapes of the locomotives, but they’re almost buried in the atmosphere. Monet was capturing the speed and the chaotic energy of Paris. It’s a noisy painting and you can almost hear the whistles and the clatter of the tracks. It was a radical subject for a fine art painting in the 1870s.
This work shows Monet’s ability to find beauty in the machine. He wasn't afraid of the city and he was energized by it. He showed us that the industrial landscape was just as worthy of his brush as a lily pond. It’s a powerful assertion of the modern experience that still resonates in our loud and crowded world.
Bibliography
Wilson-Bareau, Juliet. Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare. Yale University Press 1998.
Tucker, Paul Hayes. Monet at Argenteuil. Yale University Press 1982.
Musée d'Orsay. Claude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare. Online Collection 2024.