1 Monsters in the Fog - University of Nebraska Omaha

Monsters in the Fog: The Critical Reaction to the Railroad as Subject Matter in Manet, Monet
and Caillebotte’s Paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare and Pont de l’Europe
Like you, I have seen these sorts of frying pans topped with little tubes from
which escape little bits of smoke, and that is how you imagine a locomotive. What!
This strange force, mysterious, which holds a volcano in its flanks; this monster
with a bronze carapace, with a fiery gullet, which devours space; or rather, this
civilization made into a machine, which crushes all that resist it…I find that
canvases more vast and talents more robust are needed to render it well. Believe
me, the locomotive has not yet been portrayed.
- Thomas Couture, Méthode et entretiens d’atelier,
18671
In the recently published The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe recounts a
letter from Renoir to his father, recalling how in 1877 Claude Monet, incensed by the
condemnation of the Impressionist exhibitions, decided to confront the critics head on and do
what they alleged he had been doing since 1874 – painting fog. As Renoir recounted, Monet,
dressed in his finest marched down to the Gare Saint-Lazare, demanded – and received – the
right to paint the station, locomotives, and the steam. Renoir's account undoubtedly takes
liberties: Monet certainly did not paint twelve moderately large canvases in a day, dressed in lace
cuffs, nor were these Monet’s first paintings of the byproducts of the train or industry. The
episode nonetheless illustrates two of the prime intersections of art and industry. First, Renoir
recounts Monet’s purposeful depiction of the effects of steam and modernity; while second,
illustrating that forty years later Renoir still remembered the paintings as Monet’s response to the
critics of Impressionism.2
Today the art world celebrates the Impressionists as the painters of modern life. Scholars,
including, T.J. Clark, Robert Herbert, Juliet Wilson-Bareau and Harry Rand have all discussed
Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte’s paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare and adjacent area, but have
generally assumed that the Impressionists, or as Clark deemed them “the painters of modern life,”
1
embraced all aspects of modernization equally.3 James Rubin’s Impressionism and the Modern
Landscape: Productivity, Technology, and Urbanization from Manet to Van Gogh published in
2008, shifted the focus to the Impressionist painting of industrial activity from canals to factories
as distinct subjects.4 Despite Rubin’s intervention, the existing meta-narrative of mid- to latenineteenth century art downplays the industrial activity that was a frequent theme in
Impressionism and indicator of a significant transition in French painting. By overlooking this
subset of work, scholars have glossed over the Impressionist’s uneven and incomplete
presentation of modernity, in their images of industry as well as in their more familiar images of
leisure culture. Furthermore, it is insufficient to simply categorize when aspects of modern life
were painted, rather it is necessary to turn the question back on itself and address how objects
and settings were painted, what was emphasized, what was deemphasized and what was avoided
altogether.
The railroad was a common subject in mid-nineteenth century French photography and
prints. Daumier’s ninety depictions of the railroad and related subject matter are amongst the
earliest and most emblematic.5 However, French painters avoided showing the train in paintings
until the Impressionists, including Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte, began to include it in their
paintings in the 1870s. Manet’s The Railway, (1872-1874, Fig. 1) was shown at the Salon of
1874, where it created a – what was by then typical – scandal, while Caillebotte’s Le Pont de
l’Europe (1877, Fig. 2) and six of Monet’s twelve paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare (Figs. 3-7)
and were all shown at the Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877.6 While each of the works
received some positive responses, the reviews were predominantly negative. The most common
responses were uncertainty, perplexed curiosity, and above all avoidance. Expanding the
2
discussion beyond the clichés of Impressionism to include the large and varied volume of critical
responses elucidates Monet, Manet and Caillebotte’s paintings role as documents of the
conflicted and changing perception of industry in late-nineteenth century France.
The controversies of 1874 and 1877 inspired by the exhibition of Manet, Monet, and
Caillebotte’s paintings had been played out decades earlier in 1855, when Maxime du Camp
published Les Chants modernes, a series of poems in which he sought to find an appropriate
poetic expression for the machine.7 Noting the decadence and lack of progress in the arts, du
Camp argued that poetry, and art in general, should abandon the old and embrace the new, both
in terms of subject and style.8 Du Camp’s poems in Les Chants modernes praise industrial and
scientific progress, which he saw as complementary to artistic production.9 The first poem, “La
Vapeur,” praises steam and recounts its conquests, while another defines the railroad as the
realization of human progress.10 Despite du Camp’s hopes that Les Chants modernes would act
as a rallying cry for a new generation of writers, his poems produced the opposite reaction,
kicking off a storm of debate on the merits of industry in art in the press.11 Les Chants modernes
was widely ridiculed by contemporary critics including Flaubert, who asserted, contrary to du
Camp’s intent, that artistic progress was separate and distinct from industrial progress.12
T.J. Clark, Robert Herbert, and most scholars to-date have argued (not without merit) that
the Impressionists avoided the work and labor that made the modern world possible. Yet this
paradigm has ignored or downplayed the ways Manet, Monet, and Caillebotte all addressed the
worker in their paintings of Pont de l'Europe and the Gare Saint-Lazare. Manet’s depiction is the
earliest as well as the most uncertain. While sketchy, Manet appears to have painted a worker,
along with a small shack immediately to the right of the girl’s large, blue bow. The preparatory
sketch show two figures of workers (Fig. 8), however, in the final work he reduced the number
3
of workers from two to one, diminished the size of the shacks, and rendered the worker as an
indistinct smudge of paint. Unfortunately, the painterly character of the work coupled with the
miniscule size of the figure, makes it difficult to state with certainty if the figure is indeed a
worker. In terms of the preparatory sketch, the contrast in size between the extremely small
workers and the main figures is an evocative testament to Manet’s respective emphasis of leisure
culture and de-emphasis of labor.
Presaging the later responses to Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare paintings, when Manet’s The
Railway was exhibited at the Salon of 1874 the critics fixated on the steam and its modern
connotations.13 The prominent critic Armand Silvestre writing in the L’Opinion nationale
expressed a frequent critique of Manet, “it is not Manet’s ability as a painter which is disputed
but the selection [of subject matter] of his paintings that is severely censured.”14 Duvergler de
Heuranne, writing in the liberal literary and cultural paper Le Revue des duex mondes, was
similarly confused, stating he was unable to tell if it was a portrait or subject painting, and
concluded, “[Manet] belongs to a school which failing to recognize beauty and unable to feel it,
has made a new ideal of triviality.”15 The work was so notorious that the caricaturist Cham
featured it on the title page of, Le Salon pour Rire, his collection of Salon caricatures. In the
caption, Cham labeled the work as “Manet. The Woman with the Seal. The poor things, seeing
themselves painted like this, have tried to escape! In anticipation he put a railing that cuts off
retreat.”16 Cham avoided mentioning the huge cloud of steam, yet, contemporaneous caricatures
by Bretall in l’Illustration and Stop in Le Journal Amusants both mentioned the departing train.17
Both also poked fun at Manet’s figures, identified respectively, as sad due to the departing train
and madwomen in a padded cell.18 Even with the scandal, The Railway received an abnormally
low number of reviews compared to both Manet’s previous and later salon submissions, many of
4
which were just as controversial. Despite the notoriety of the work the paucity of reviews in
1874, prefiguring the negative response to Monet’s paintings in 1877, suggests that many critics
simply avoided discussing the subject of the painting altogether.
Caillebotte also painted workers, identifiable in their distinctive blue smocks, in Le Pont
de l’Europe and slightly earlier On the Europe Bridge (1876-77, Fig. 9). However, while
Caillebotte painted workers in both images, he showed them walking and standing on the Pont de
l’Europe rather than below in the train yards. In both paintings, the heavy iron structure of the
bridge keeps the yards at a distance, separating the yards from the workers as well as from the
viewer. In Caillebotte’s paintings, unlike Monet’s, none of the workers actually do any work, and
the yards below seem inactive, with small trains and a slight puff of smoke respectively. Still,
even if diminished, Caillebotte and Manet addressed work, labor, and industry and they did not
hide or avoid them as Clark described.
Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte all depicted the yards of the Gare Saint-Lazare in some
degree, but this was not true of all of the artists who painted the site. A counterpoint is provided
by Jean Béraud’s The Place and Pont de l'Europe (c. 1876-78, Fig. 11), which was painted at the
same time as Monet and Caillebotte’s paintings of the rail yards and station, yet unlike the
Impressionists’ depictions, Béraud used an exceedingly low vantage point and high horizon line
to block the view of the train yards. These odd choices obstruct the view of the large station,
sheds, and tracks that literally passed under the site. Béraud showed the Garnier Opera in almost
the exact spot as in Caillebotte’s On the Europe Bridge, (Fig. 9), however, where Caillebotte
distorted perspective to bring the yards, steam, and trains more fully into view Béraud renders
the yards invisible.
5
Despite the prominence of steam in Caillebotte and Manet’s paintings, it was in Monet’s
paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare, and even more in the critical reaction to them, that steam and
industrial labor truly took center stage. Monet’s twelve paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare are
full of a wide variety of depictions of steam. Where in 1874, many authors had avoided even
discussing The Railway - in 1877, the reviewers were much less likely to avoid discussing
Monet’s images of the Gare Saint-Lazare. Of the more than forty reviews of the Third
Impressionist Exhibition that mention specific paintings, nearly thirty mention at least one of the
paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare (often referring to the group as a whole rather than to specific
works). Monet’s paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare were mentioned at a frequency that was only
rivaled – and not surpassed – by Caillebotte’s Paris Street Rainy Day (1877) and Renoir’s
Moulin de la Galette (1876) the two most popular and critically successful paintings shown at
the Third Impressionist Exhibition. However, critical attention was not always a positive thing,
and predictably, the majority of reviews that mentioned Monet or his paintings of the Gare SaintLazare were quite negative.
Of Monet’s twelve views of the Gare Saint-Lazare three-quarter show the train yards, yet
the four interior views of the station received greater attention from both contemporary critics
and subsequent scholars. The paintings of the yards at the Gare Saint-Lazare were not Monet’s
only large-scale paintings of trains, which he depicted throughout the 1870s in at least fourteen
other paintings that showed the train at Chatou, Rueil, Déville and most notably at Argenteuil
where he repeatedly showed both the rail bridge and the station. Contrary to scholarly opinion
that has discussed the Impressionists exclusively as painters of Parisian leisure culture, The
Railway Station at Argenteuil (1872, Fig. 10), The Railroad Train (The Goods Train, Le Convoi
du chemin de fer (1872) The Railway in the Snow (1875) and Train in the Snow at Argenteuil,
6
(1875) along with the paintings of the yards at the Gare Saint-Lazare are full of trains, steam, and
rails.19 While the workers are absent and only implied in The Railway Station at Argenteuil, there
are clear depictions of workers in at least half of Monet’s paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare (cf.
Fig. 3-Fig. 7). In these paintings, there is no doubt that the industry and machines depicted are
performing work.
The reviewers of the Third Impressionist Exhibition, like the earlier reviewers of the
Salon of 1874, largely avoided discussing the workers in Manet and Caillebotte’s paintings.
Nonetheless, a number of reviews indirectly alluded to industrial work by focusing, often at
length, on Monet’s ability to convey the noise and activity of the station in paint. One review that
focuses on the noise of the machinery Monet painted, appeared in L’Homme libre by an
unknown reviewer under the pseudonym ‘Jacques’ who wrote:
Monsieur Monet loves this station, he represented [it] several times with less
success - truly amazing. The brush makes, not only the movement, color, activity,
but the noise is unbelievable; this station is full of noise, squeaks, whistles, which
are distinguishable through the heavy blue and gray smoke. It is a pictorial
symphony.20
Emile Zola, writing as ‘La Sémaphore de Marseille,’ echoed this defense of Monet and called on
artists to emulate his example and transition to new modern subjects:
Claude Monet is the most pronounced personality of the group. He has shown this
year superb train [station] interiors. We hear the rumble of trains that rush, we see
excesses of smoke that roll within the large sheds. Today there is painting in such
beautifully wide modern frameworks. Our artists have to find the poetry of the
stations, as their fathers have found in the forests and rivers.21
The reviewer’s fixation on the noise in Monet’s paintings is indicative of the striking contrast to
other works such as contemporaneous engravings of the site.22 Moreover, the positive tone of
these reviews was rare.
In both the positive and negative responses, reviewers frequently evoked the steam to
close their discussion of the paintings. A. Descubes writing in the Gazette des lettres, des
7
sciences et des arts, in a particularly negative review, wrote, “[Monet] wanted to show us the
different aspects of the Gare Saint-Lazare, [including the] arrival and departure of trains.
Unfortunately the thick smoke escaping from the canvas has prevented us from seeing the six
paintings of this study.”23 Likewise, Louis Leroy, the critic who had first coined the terms
‘Impressionists’ in 1874, mocked Monet’s painting to avoid discussing the subject matter, which
the French critical establishment still regarded as an unworthy subject for painting. Leroy’s
review in the satirical Le Charivari described the paintings as “a railway station. I think, with
smoke so furiously twisted, it seems to insult the philistine that looks at it smiling.”24 Similarly,
Léon de Lora wrote in the relatively liberal La Gaulois that the works were “filled with black
smoke, pink, gray, violet, [making them] ineffable and incomprehensible.”25 Meanwhile,
Geogres Maillard in the conservative, Napoleonic Le Pays, roundly dismissed the entire
exhibition as “dementia, the basis of the horrible and the miserable; They look like they were
painted, with eyes closed, by madmen, randomly mixing the most violent colors on pallets of
tinplate. This is the negation of all that is allowed in painting.”26 Maillard however does offer one
of the most complete descriptions of Monet’s paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare:
These Impressionists ... have a special sympathy for the locomotives and the
vapor they launch. You find in this room for laughter eight to ten paintings, all of
which show a special fondness for this kind of mechanical studies. The rails,
lanterns, switchers, wagons, above all, always these flakes, these mists, clouds of
white steam, are so thick they sometimes hide everything.27
Maillard’s extensive description though is the exception that proves the rule; he degrades the
paintings as mechanical studies rather than proper paintings and lists the elements not to provide
an accurate description for the reader but rather as a survey of the mechanical elements present.
These paintings are not to be appreciated but laughed at. In the end, he reverts to the same tactic
employed by the other critics - dismissing the works as illegible due to the thick clouds of steam.
8
The degree of obfuscation in Descubes, de Lora, Leroy, and Maillard’s reviews is
apparent comparing their reviews to the description of steam and the site in more positive
reviews such as G. Rivière’s review published in L’Ariste in November 1877. Rivière praises the
paintings, noting:
M. Monet, with his train stations, strikes an original note of the exposition at the
rue Lepeletier. One of these paintings represents the arrival of a train under the
Pont de l’Europe [probably Fig. 5, W.4.42 or View Toward the Batignolles
Tunnels, W.447] Another shows a locomotive heating up for departure, the air is
charged with steam, acres of fumes released by the burning coal. Another painting
contains only the disc [of a signal], the train just passed and the smoke swirls on
the rails in big heavy clouds [Fig. 6, W.445 or Fig. 7, W.448].28
Rivière was undoubtedly among the most partisan and pro-Impressionist; he was the editor for
the short-lived journal L’Impressionniste, however, Frédéric Chevalier’s review, which also
appeared in L’Artiste on May 1, expressed many of the same arguments:
Among many railway stations, the eminently modern topic at the highest point
concern for M. Monet, one must notice a Gare Saint-Lazare bearing the number
117, and another painting without number, [Fig. 6, W.445 or Fig. 7, W.448] and
with the threatening and fierce disc of a signal, that dominates the foreground.
Despite the overly heavy vapors that invade these landscapes, the frenzied
statement has a striking effect, because the color is bright and true, and that
drawing is caressed as little as possible, and he distributes values by large masses
in the exact place they should occupy.29
Rivière and Chevalier ‘s descriptions of the subject matter are rare in their willingness to address
the painting of the train yards, something almost no other reviewers chose to mention. Beyond
offering positive reviews, they also did not use the representation of steam to deflect discussion,
but rather acknowledged the steam as one of the painting’s subjects.
While it is not surprising that the steam was the most frequently mentioned element in the
critical responses to Monet’s paintings of the Gare Saint Lazare, in all but a few instances the
steam is the only thing mentioned. Monet’s preparatory drawings (Fig. 12) show his attention to
the steam early in the project, but make it clear that Monet wanted to show the steam as an
9
independent element, and not just the effluvia of the train. However, the preparatory works also
show that the steam was not the only element of the paintings. Comparing the preparatory works
to the final painting (cf. Fig. 3, W.438 and Fig. 12) shows that Monet included landmarks like
the roofs of the Gare Saint-Lazare and the Pont de l'Europe, which Caillebotte, Manet, and
Béraud had also painted, and which would have been readily recognizable to contemporary
bourgeoisie Parisians.
While Modernist critics and scholars have frequently evoked flatness to praise avantgarde painting, in 1877 critics also invoked flatness to condemn the depictions of modernity,
evidently to avoid discussing the subject matter by labeling it as illegible. A duplicate portion of
text that appeared in the reviews of Pierre Véron and Georges Lafenester’s twice referred to
Interior View of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line, (Fig. 3, W.438) as a map two times.
The review first called Monet’s painting, “a very pretty map in the middle of which one can
distinguish a locomotive,” and then again, in a closing barb, concluded: “As the names of towns,
rivers, mountains and the train tracks have indicated, the work qualifies for inclusion in the
Conservatory of Arts-and-Crafts, or the repository of maps and plans.”30 The anti-modern
sentiment carried over to another section of the same review that attacked Monet’s famous Les
Dindons, which hung between two of Monet’s views of Gare Saint-Lazare at the Third
Impressionist Exhibition. The review criticized Monet’s paint handling in Les Dindons, and
suggested that the turkeys look more like white puffs of smoke.31 A similar conflation of modern
technology and criticisms of Impressionist paintings appeared in a review in the liberal La
République francaise by an anonymous author under the initials Ph.B. who deemed the
Impressionist landscape painters, specifically, Monet, Cézanne, Pissarro, and an incorrectly
10
spelled Sisley, unpardonable for reducing their trees to incorporeal forms that have the stiffness
of telegraph poles.32
Even positive reviewers who actually acknowledged the painting’s subject matter still
had trouble coming to grips with the modernity Monet painted. Rivière, the most enthusiastic and
unapologetically positive reviewer, resorted to fantastic allusions to describe Monet’s paintings
of the train:
In one of the biggest pictures {100} [Fig. 4, W.439] the train has just arrived, the
locomotive is about to depart. Like a furious and impatient beast, energized rather
than fatigued by the long haul it has just provided, it shakes its mane of smoke,
which presses up to the glass roof of the great hall. All around the monster, men
crawl over the tracks, like pygmies at the feet of a giant. One hears the workers
cries, the piercing whistles of the engines sending out their cries of alarm, the
incessant noise of the iron and the formidable and puffing breathing of the steam.
One sees the grandiose and distracting movement of a station whose ground
trembles at every turning of a wheel. The walkways are damp with soot, and the
air is clogged with the acrid odor that comes from burning coal. Looking at this
beautiful painting, we are seized of the same emotion as before nature, and this
emotion that may be even stronger, because in the paint there is that of the artist
and more.33
In the full review Rivière expanded on these ideas but retained the basic format; positive,
generally active adjectives are used to describe the trains, they are fast, irresistible, furious,
impatient, and energized – yet the trains themselves are giants and beasts, their workers mere
pygmies. This formulation fits with the larger trend of both the positive and negative responses
to the paintings: a familiarity bordering on acceptance of the travel by train, but a continued
reticence toward industrial machinery. Even the positive reviews like Rivière describing the
‘monsters’ in the fog, note the “manes of smoke,” and “piercing whistles,” “soot” and “acrid
odor that comes from burning coal.” Thus, while more supportive of Monet, the fantastic
allusions in Rivière’s description are the counterpoint to the obfuscation and conflation of the
11
negative reviews, and should be read as evidence that in 1877 progressive voices were still
grappling with the artistic depiction of even familiar industrial subject matter in painting.
The reluctance to discuss industry as a subject of fine art is not exclusive to nineteenthcentury French society, as contemporary scholars of the nineteenth-century art continue to
propagate this view today. Academic analysis has largely omitted the exterior views in favor of
the interiors, despite the fact that eight of the twelve paintings are of exteriors. Ten of the twelve
paintings all are approximately the same size, and while the two larger paintings are both
interiors (Fig. 1, W.438 and Fig. 2 W.439), they are only slightly lager, suggesting that Monet
considered the works equally significant.34 Furthermore, there is no verifiable evidence that
Monet exhibited more of the interiors at the Third Impressionist Exhibition, a misconception that
many scholars have propagated without evidence.35 The reviews of the Exhibition by
contemporary critics identified three of the interiors by name but also identified at least three of
the exteriors.36 If anything, it is more probable that Monet showed and equal number of interiors
and exteriors, and if anything showed more exterior views than interiors in 1877. The ensuing
exhibition history further supports this understanding. During Monet’s lifetime two of the twelve
paintings – one interior, Arrival of the Normandy Train, (W.440) and one exterior, Le Pont de
Europe, (Fig. 5, W.442) – were consistently shown more than the other paintings of the Gare
Saint-Lazare.
Scholars have downplayed the industrial aspects in a second way, by referring to the
works as a series. Monet is famous for his careful attention to light in his major series from the
1880s and onward, including his famous paintings of The Haystacks, Belle-Isle, Rouen
12
Cathedral and, of course, the Water Lilies. However, compared to these later works, Monet’s
paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare cannot be considered a series.
Paul Hayes Tucker, exploring Monet’s interest in series paintings, found that he began
doing serial project at mid-career, in the 1880s, and specifically in response to the challenge of
Seurat.37 Tucker points out that while Monet painted the Gare Saint-Lazare paintings in quick
succession he did not paint from the same vantage point - even the four seemingly similar
interiors show a variety of views from different points located all over the station. Nor is there a
consistent exploration of the effect of light in the Gare Saint-Lazare paintings. Two of the
paintings, Interior View of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line (Fig. 3 W.438) and View of
the Batignolles Tunnels in Sunshine (W.443), show the effect of a sunny day, but the other ten
are unrelated depictions of clouds and steam with little attention light or even color. Hence,
Tucker concludes, I believe correctly, that the Gare Saint-Lazare paintings are best described as
an ensemble, not a series. Nonetheless, most contemporary scholars, echoing the bias of Monet’s
own critics, have focused on the effect of light and atmosphere both because of the importance
within Impressionism, but also at the expense of discussing the unique, and important subject
matter of Monet’s paintings of Gare Saint-Lazare.
Until the last few decades, scholarship on the Impressionists has repeated the narrow
view of the original critics and confined discussion to the effects of light and atmosphere with
insufficient attention to the uneven and varied acceptance of modernity.38 This has begun to
change as social-historical approaches have challenged the goals of the discipline. Yet while
Monet, Manet and Caillebotte’s paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare have been used to illustrate
the rise of industry in the nineteenth century outside the discipline, within art history they are
still discussed within the generic scope of Impressionism, without discussion of their unique
13
subject matter. These works are significant because of both their industrial subject matter and
aesthetic experimentation and even more as material testament to the varied, conflicted, and
changing perception of industry and modernity in French society in the 1870s.
1 All
translations, unless otherwise noted are my own. "J’ai vu, comme vous, des espèces de poêles à frire
surmontées de petits tuyaux desquels s’échappaient de petites fumées, et c’est cela qui vous représente une
locomotive. Quoi! Cette force étrange, mystérieuse, qui contient un volcan dans es flancs; ce monstre à
carapace de bronze, à gueule de feu, qui dévore l’espace, ou plutôt cette civilisation faite machine qui broie
tout ce qui lui résiste... moi je trouve qu’il faut pour la bien rendre des toiles plus vastes et des talents plus
robustes. Croyez-moi, la locomotive n’a pas été rendue.” Thomas Couture, Méthode et entretiens d’atelier
(Paris: L. Guérin, 1867), 254–55 (ellipsis in original) quoted from Jane Boyd, The Mapping of Modernity:
Impressionist Landscapes, Engineering, and Transportation Imagery in 19th-century France, Department of Art History,
University of Delaware (Ann Arbor: UMI, 2009), 83.
2 Sue Roe, The Private Lives of the Impressionists (HarperCollins, 2006), 173–174.
3 For further information see: T.J. Clark, Painting of Modern LIfe: The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of
Manet and his Followers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art,
Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Manet, Monet, and
the Gare Saint-Lazare (New Haven: Yale University Press, c1998), Harry Rand, Manet's contemplation at the Gare
Saint-Lazare (Berkeley: University of California Press, c1987).
4 James H. Rubin, Impressionism and the modern landscape : productivity, technology, and urbanization from Manet to Van
Gogh (Berkeley: University of California Press, c2008).
5 Daumier first known image of the train is “Coach drivers smoking like locomotives,” (1839) a wood
engraving for the Almanach comique pour 1840. Quite possibly his most well known image of the train is The
Third Class Carriage, 1864, which he produced a number of versions in varied mediums.
6 For the sake of brevity I have only included five the twelve paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare. In the
complete group there are eight exteriors and four interiors. Monet exhibited between five and eight of these
paintings at the Third Impressionist Exhibition. Given the close nature of many of Monet’s titles, the variety
of titles used by different scholars, and the inconsistent nature of contemporary reference (both by Monet
and his critics) I have adopted a hybrid approach using both Wilson-Bareau’s descriptive titles and
Wildenstein’s catalogue numbering, (abbreviated as W. followed by the number). For the complete series see
Wilson-Bareau.
7 The railroad, train engines, and the Gare Saint-Lazare were also featured prominently in Zola’s La Bête
Humaine, published in 1890, but set in the mid-nineteenth century. Émile Zola, La Bête humaine, trans. Roger
Pearson (New Yorks: Oxford University Press, 1996).
8 Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial madness : commercial photography in Paris (New Haven: Yale University
Press, c1994), 228.; Elliott Grant, French poetry and modern industry 1830-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1927), 95.
9 Grant, 86, 90.
10 Grant, 94.
11 McCauley, 229.
12 McCauley, 108.
13 Wilson-Bareau, 55.
14 George Heard Hamiltion, Manet and his critics. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), 180.
15 Hamiltion, 179.
16 “Ces malheureuses se voyant peintes de la sorte ont voulu fuir! Mais lui, prévoyant, a placé une grille, qui
leur a coupé toute retraite.” Cham, in Wilson-Bareau, 52.
14
“Ou le départ de M. Faure pour l'Angleterre, ce qui explique l'air navré des personnages. Ce n'est pas gai
non plus pour M. Manet.” Bretall’s Tour of the Salon of 1874,” L’Illustration, 23 May 1874, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Estampes, Paris (cat. 77); “Deux folles, atteintes de monomanétie incurable, regardent
passer les wagons à travers les barreaux de leur cabanon.” Stop – “The Salon of 1874 by Stop.” Le Journal
amusants, June 12, 1874, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Estampes, Paris (cat. 79); Wilson-Bareau, 51.
18 Wilson-Bareau, 51.
19 Clark argues that The Railway Station at Argenteuil is symptomatic of the wider focus of the Impressionists –
who were more concerned with portraying leisure culture than the working-class labor that had produced it –
and hence, according to Clark, artfully hid the labor that ran the railroads and modern industry. T.J. Clark,
Painting of Modern LIfe: The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1999), 189-190.
20 “Une vue de la gare Saint-Lazare - M. Monet affectionne cette gare, qu'il représentée plusieurs fois avec
moins de bonheur - prodigieuse véritablement. Le pinceau rendant, non seulement le mouvement, la couleur,
l'activité mais le bruit, c'est invraisemblable; et pourtant cette gare est pleine de tapage, de grincements, de
sifflements, qu'on distingue à travers la fumée intense, dont les nuages azurés et gris se heurtent. C'est une
symphonie picturale.” Jacques, "Menus propos: Salon impressionniste," L'Homme libre, April 1877: 2 in
Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume I: Reviews, 154-156.
21 “M. Claude Monet est la personnalité la plus accentuée du groupe. Il a exposé cette année des intérieurs de
gare superbes. On y entend le grondement des trains qui s'engouffrent, on y voit des débordements de fumée
qui roulent sous les vastes hangars. Là est aujourd’hui la peinture, dans ces cadres modernes d’un si belle
largeur. Nos artistes doivent trouver la poésie des gares, comme leurs pères ont trouvé celle des forêts et des
fleuves.” Emile Zola, "Notes parisiennes: une Exposition; Les Peintres impressionnistes," Le Sémaphore de
Marseille, April 1877: 1, in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume I: Reviews, 190-92.
22 Some contemporary examples include Auguste Lamay – “Paris, Bridge Erected on the Place de l'Europe,
over the Western Region Railway,” in L’Illutration, April 11, 1868, Georges Perrichon - New Paris. the Place de
l'Europe over the Western Regions Railway, from L'Univers illustré, October 9, 1868, and August Tilly - Bird's-eye view
of the New Gare Saint-Lazare now under construction, wood engraving, from L'Illustration, July 17, 1886 cited in
Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare, 74.
23 “A voulu nous montrer le différence aspects de la Gare Saint-Lazare à arrivée et au départ des trains.
malheureusement une fumée épaisse s'échappant de la toile nous a empêché de la toile nous a empêché de
voir les six tableaux consacrés à cette étude.” A. Descbubes, "L'Exposition des impressionnistes," Gazette des
lettres, des sciences et des artes, April 1877: 185-188, in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1:
Reviews, 143-44.
24 “Je crois, une gare de chemin de fer avec un fumée si rageusement tire-bouchonnée, qu'elle semble insulter
le philistin que la regarde en souriant.” Louis Leory, "Exposition des impressionnistes," Le Charivari, April
1877: 2, in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 159-160.
25 “Si ce dernier peintre est pour les marchés, c’est pour les chemins de fer qu’est M. Claude Monet. Il nous
donne cinq ou six vues intérieures de la gare Saint-Lazare, emplies de fumées noires, roses, grises, vilacées, qui
en font d’ineffables grimoires.” Léon de Lora, “L’Exposition des impressionnistes,” Le Gaulois (Paris, April 10,
1877), 1-2, in Berson, , The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 162.
26 “C'est de la démence, ce du parti pris dans l'horrible et dans l'exécrable; on dirait que cela a été peint, les
yeux fermés, par de hommes aliénés, mélangeant au hasard les couleurs les plus violentes sur des palettes de
fer blanc. C'est la négation de tout ce qui est admis en peinture,” Georges Maillard, ""Chronique: Les
Impressinnistes," Le Pays, April 1877: 2-3, in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1:
Reviews, 164.
27 “Ces impressionnistes...ont une sympathie spéciale pour le locomotives et la vapeur qu'elles lancent. Vous
trouvez dans ce salon pour rire huit à dix toiles qui toutes prouvent une prédilection particulière pour ce
genre d'études mécanique. Et des rails, et des lanternes, et des aiguilleures, et des wagons, et surtout, toujours
ces flocons, ces brouillards, ces nuages de vapeur blanche, se épais parfois qu'ils cachent tout le reste.”
Maillard, 2 in Berson, 164.
17
15
Rivière identifies the Pont de l’Europe as the Rue de Rome, the road southwest of the Pont de l’Europe.
Monet’s painting was originally titled Le Rue de Rome. “M. Monet, avec ses gares de chemins de fer, vient jeter
à son tour une note originale à l'exposition de la rue Lepelletier. Un de ses tableaux représente l'arrivée d'un
train sous les pont de la rue de Rome. Un autre nos montre un locomotive chauffant pour la départ, l'air est
chargé de vapeur, d'âcres émanations dégagées par la houille en combustion. Un autre tableau ne contient que
des disques, le train vient de passer et la fumée tournoie sur la voie en grosses nuées lourdes; ce tableau n'est
pas les moins intéressant.” G. Rivière, "Les Intransigeants et les impressionnistes: Souvenirs du salon libre de
1877," L'Artiste, November 1877: 298-302, in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1:
Reviews, 186.
29 “Parmi de nombreuses gares de chemin de fer, sujet éminemment modern et qui préoccupe au plus haut
point M. Monet, il faut remarquer une gare Saint-Lazare portant numéro 117, ainsi qu'une autre tille sans
numéro et dont un disque [signale] menaçant et farouche domine le premier plan. Malgré les vapeurs trop
lourdes qui les envahissent, ces paysages, un facture endiablée, sont d'un effet saisissant parce que la couleur
en est brillante et vraie, et que le dessin, aussi peu caressé que possible, distribue les valeurs par grand masses
à la place exacte qu'elles doivent occuper.” Frédéric Chevalier, "Les Impressionnistes," L'Ariste, May 1877:
329-333 in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 137-41.
30 Il a fait une fort jolie carte géographique au milieu de laquelle on distingue un locomotive…Si les noms de
villes, les fleuves, les montagnes et les voies ferrés avait indiquées, l'œuvre serait digne de figurer au
Conserservatoire des arts-et-métiers, ou au dépôt des cartes et plans. Lafenstre, 2 in Berson, The New Painting
Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews 169.; Véron, 2 in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886,
Volume 1: Reviews, 174.
31 Il fallait un adjectif aussi étonnant pour désigner un système aussi imprévu. Quand on a fait des chevaux
verts, de chair rouge brique, des dindons des flocons de fumée, et le sol du Moulin de la Galette semblable a
un nuage violet on a fait de la peinture vibrante. Lafenstre, 2 in Berson, The New Painting Impressionism 18741886, Volume 1: Reviews 169.; Véron, 2 in Berson, 174.
32 Ph.B, "Exposition des impressionistes," La Republique française, April 1877: 3, in Berson, The New Painting
Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 123-124.
33 “Dans l'un des plus grandes tableaux, le train vient d'arriver, la locomotive va repartir. Comme un bête
impatiente et fougueuse, animée plutôt que fatiguée par la longue traite qu'elle vient de fournir, elle secoue sa
crinière de fumée qui se heurte à la toiture vitrée de la grande halle. Autour du monstre, les hommes
grouillent sur la voie, comme des pygmées au pied d'un géant. De l'autre côté, des locomotives au repos
attendent endormies. Et dans le fond, le ciel gris drapant les hautes maisons pâles ferme l'horizon. On entend
les cris de employés, les sifflets aigues des machines jetant au loin leur cri d'alarme, le bruit de ferraille
incessant et la respiration formidable et haletante de la vapeur.
On voit le mouvement grandiose et affolé d'une gare dont le terrain tremble à chaque tour de roues. Les
trottoirs sont humides de suie, et l'atmosphère est chargée de cette odeur âcre qui émane de la houille en
combustion. En regardant ce magnifique tableau, on est saisi de la même émotion que devant la nature, et
cette émotion est peut-être plus forte encore, parce que dans le tableau il y a celle de l'artiste en plus.” G.
Rivière, "L'Exposition des impressionnistes," l'Impressionniste, April 1877: 2-6, in Berson, The New Painting
Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 179-181.
34 Wildenstein gives the Gare Saint-Lazare paintings (numbered 438-449) titles, dimensions, exhibition history
and provenance. Wildenstein, 177-182.
35 Catalogue de la 3° Exposition de Peinture, 6 Rue Le Peletier, 6 Paris, Avril 1877, 9-10. in Berson, The New
Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 119.
36 The catalogue of the Third Impressionist Exhibition lists seven of the Gare Saint-Lazare works. Descube’s
review states that Monet showed six works, however, as mentioned already, de Lora’s review states that five
or six interiors were shown while Maillard’s review, even more contradictorily, states that ten pieces where
shown. Catalogue de la 3° Exposition de Peinture, 6 Rue Le Peletier, 6 Paris, Avril 1877, 9-10. in Berson, The New
Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews, 76-77, 119.
28
16
Paul Hayes Tucker, "Monet and the Challanges to Impressionism in the 1880," in Critical Readings in
Impressionism & Post-Impressionism, ed. Mary Tompkins Lewis, 226-49 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007), 237
38 Clark, “Modernism, Postmodernism, and Steam”: 162-3.
37
17
FIGURES
Fig. 1 - Manet - The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas, 36.6 x 44 in, (93 x112 cm), National Gallery
of Art (U.S.)
Fig. 2 - Caillebotte - Le Pont de l'Europe, 1876, oil on canvas, 49.2 x 71.3 in. (125 cm x 181 cm),
Genève, musée du Petit Palais
18
Fig. 3 - Monet - Interior View of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line, 1877, 29.5 x 40.9 in.
(75 x 104 cm), Musée d’Orsay (W.438)
Fig. 4 - Monet - Arrival of a train, 1877, oil on canvas, 32.3 x 39.7 in. (82 x 101 cm), Fogg Art
Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (W.439)
19
Fig. 5 - Monet - Le Pont de l'Europe (Gare Saint-Lazare), 1877, oil on canvas, 25.2 x 31.5 in.
(64 x 80 cm), Musée Marmottan – Claude Monet (W.442)
Fig. 6 - Monet - Gare Saint-Lazare, Trucks and a Signal in Front of the Station Roofs, 1877, oil
on canvas, 23.6 x 31.4 in. (60 x 80 cm), private collection, Japan (W.445)
20
Fig. 7 - Monet - Gare Saint-Lazare, View Toward the Normandy Line, with Track Signals, 1877,
oil on canvas, 25.8 x 32.1 in. (65.5 x 81.5 cm), Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum
Hanover (W.448)
Fig. 8 - Manet - “The Pont de l'Europe and Rue St. Petersburg,” 1872, preparatory works for The
Railroad, graphite on pages from a sketchbook, Jean-Claude Romand collection
21
Fig. 9 - Caillebotte - On the Europe Bridge, 1876-77, oil on canvas, 41-5/8 x 51-1/2 in. (105.7 x
130.8 cm), Kimball Art Museum
Fig. 10 - Monet – The Railway Station at Argenteuil, 1872, oil on canvas, 18.7 x 27.9 in, Vald'Oise (France). Conseil general
22
Fig. 11 – Jean Béraud - The Place and Pont de l'Europe, c. 1876-78, oil on canvas, 7.2 x 29 in.
(18.3 x 73.7 cm), Private Collection
23
Fig. 12 - Monet – “Interior of the Gare Saint-Lazare,” graphite on sketch book page, 1877,
Musée Marmottan – Claude Monet, Paris
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armstong, Carol. Manet Mannette. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Berson, Ruth. The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume 1: Reviews. Vol. 1. Seattle,
WA: University of Washington Press, 1996.
—. The New Painting Impressionism 1874-1886, Volume II: Exhibited Works. Vol. 2. Seattle,
WA: University of Washington Press, 1996.
Boyd, Jane. The Mapping of Modernity: Impressionist Landscapes, Engineering, and
Transportation Impagery in 19th-century France. Department of Art History, University
of Delaware, Ann Arbor: UMI, 2009.
Chevalier, Frédéric. "Les Impressionnistes." L'Ariste, May 1877: 329-333.
Clark, T.J. "“Modernism, Postmodernism, and Steam,”." October (The MIT Press), Spring 2002:
154-174.
—. "On the Social History of Art." In Image of the People: Gustav Courbet and the Second
French Republic, 1848-1851, by T.J. Clark. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society,
c1973.
—. Painting of Modern LIfe: The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his
Followers. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
de Lora, Léon. “L’Exposition des impressionnistes.” Le Gaulois. Paris, April 10, 1877.
Descbubes, A. "L'Exposition des impressionnistes." Gazette des lettres, des sciences et des artes,
April 1877: 185-188.
Grant, Elliott. French poetry and modern industry 1830-1870. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1927.
Hamiltion, George Heard. Manet and his critics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
House, John. "Authority vs. Independence: the position of French Landscape in the 1870s." In
Framing France : the representation of landscape in France1870-1914, edited by
Richard Thomson. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Huysman, J.-K. "L'Exposition des indépendants en 1880." L'Art moderne (G. Charpentier), 1883:
85-123.
Jacques. "Menus propos: Salon impressionniste." L'Homme libre, April 1877: 2.
Lafenestre, Georges. "Le Jour et la nuit." Le Moniteur universel, April 1877: 2.
Leory, Louis. "Exposition des impressionnistes." Le Charivari, April 1877: 2.
24
—. "Le Public à l'exposition des impressionistes." Le Charivari, April 1877: 82-83.
Maillard, Georges. ""Chronique: Les Impressinnistes." Le Pays, April 1877: 2-3.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne. Industrial madness : commercial photography in Paris. New Haven:
Yale University Press, c1994.
Ph.B. "Exposition des impressionistes." La Republique française, April 1877: 3.
Rand, Harry. Manet's contemplation at the Gare Saint-Lazare. Berkeley: University of
California Press, c1987.
Reynaud, F. Léonce. Traité d’Architecture. 3rd Edition. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Paris: Libraire des Corps
Impériaux des Ponts ed Chaussées et des Mines, 1870.
Rivière, G. "Les Intransigeants et les impressionnistes: Souvenirs du salon libre de 1877."
L'Artiste, November 1877: 298-302.
—. "L'Exposition des impressionnistes." l'Impressionniste, April 1877: 2-6.
Roe, Sue. The Private Lives of the Impressionists. HarperCollins, 2006.
Rubin, James H. Impressionism and the modern landscape : productivity, technology, and
urbanization from Manet to Van Gogh. Berkeley: University of California Press, c2008.
Tucker, Paul Hayes. "Monet and the Challanges to Impressionism in the 1880." In Critical
Readings in Impressionism & Post-Impressionism, edited by Mary Tompkins Lewis, 22649. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
Véron, Pierre. "Les Impressionistes." La Petit Press, August 1877: 2.
Wildenstien, Daniel. Claude Monet : biographie et catalogue raisonné. 4 vols. Paris: Lausanne.
Wilson-Bareau, Juliet. Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare. New Haven: Yale University
Press, c1998.
Zola, Émile. La Bête humaine. Translated by Roger Pearson. New Yorks: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
—. "Notes parisiennes: une Exposition; Les Peintres impressionnistes." Le Sémaphore de
Marseille, April 1877: 1.
25