Monet's "La Gare Saint-Lazare" - 1000pc Jigsaw Puzzle

The Iron Cathedral

Paris in 1877 was no longer a city of limestone and silence. It was a city of iron and steam.

Claude Monet saw the future in the grit of the Gare Saint-Lazare. He didn't see a commute. He saw a laboratory of light where the sun fought through a thick soup of sulfur and coal smoke.

Monet was broke and desperate. He couldn't even pay his rent without his friend Gustave Caillebotte footing the bill. To get the shot he wanted, he played the part of a titan. He put on his best suit and marched into the station manager’s office. He convinced the man he was a world-class master. He demanded the trains be stopped. He ordered the engineers to pile on extra coal. He wanted the thickest, darkest smoke possible to catch the midday light.

The result was a revolution. Monet treated the glass roof like the vaulted ceiling of a Gothic cathedral. While the critics called the station vulgar and noisy, Monet saw the vibrating blue and orange of the atmosphere. He used broken color to paint the air itself because a camera couldn't handle the chaos of a moving engine. He dedicated an entire room to this series at the Third Impressionist Exhibition. He forced the public to look at the industrial grime of their own lives and call it art. It was the sound of a whistle replacing the silence of the woods.

References

• Distel, Anne. Impressionism: The First Collectors. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990.
• Herbert, Robert L. Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
• Seitz, William C. Claude Monet. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982.
• Wildenstein, Daniel. Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism. Cologne: Taschen, 1996.