Impression, Sunrise () is an 1872 painting by Claude Monet first shown at what would become known as the "Exhibition of the Impressionists" in Paris in April, 1874. The painting is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement.
Impression, Sunrise depicts the port of Le Havre, Monet's hometown. It is usually displayed at the Musée Marmottan Monet.
History
thumb|left|upright|The home of photographer [[Nadar, where the 1874 exhibition took place]]
Monet visited his hometown of Le Havre in the Northwest of France in 1872 and proceeded to create a series of works depicting the port. The six painted canvases depict the port "during dawn, day, dusk, and dark and from varying viewpoints, some from the water itself and others from a hotel room looking down over the port".
Impression, Sunrise became the most famous in the series after being debuted in April 1874 in Paris at an exhibition by the group "Painters, Sculptors, Engravers etc. Inc." Among thirty participants, the exhibition was led by Monet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, and showed over two hundred works that were seen by about 4,000 people, including some rather unsympathetic critics.
The painting is usually displayed at the Musée Marmottan Monet. and put back on display in 1991.
It was on loan at the Musée d'Orsay from 26 March until 14 July 2024, and was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from 8 September 2024 until 19 January 2025.
While the title of the painting seemed to be chosen in haste for the catalogue, the term "Impressionism" was not new. It had been used for some time to describe the effect of paintings from the Barbizon School. Both associated with the school, Daubigny and Manet had been known to use the term to describe their own works.
In the critic Louis Leroy's review of the 1874 exhibition, "The Exhibition of the Impressionists" for the newspaper Le Charivari, he used "Impressionism" to describe the new style of work displayed, which he said was typified by Monet's painting of the same name.
Before the 1860s and the debut of Impression, Sunrise, the term "impressionism" was originally used to describe the effect of a natural scene on a painter, and the effect of a painting on the viewer. By the 1860s, "impression" was used by transference to describe a painting which relayed such an effect. In turn, impression came to describe the movement as a whole.
Initially used to describe and deprecate a movement, the term Impressionism "was immediately taken up by all parties" to describe the style, Loose brush strokes meant to suggest the scene rather than to mimetically represent it demonstrate the emergent Impressionist movement. In the wake of an emergent industrialization in France, this style expressed innovative individuality. Considering this, Smith claims that "Impression, Sunrise was about Monet's search for spontaneous expression, but was guided by definite and historically specific ideas about what spontaneous expression was."
Luminance
thumb|Desaturated version of the painting: the Sun is virtually invisible. [[Margaret Livingstone, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard University, said "If you make a black and white copy of Impression: Sunrise, the Sun disappears [almost] entirely."
Criticism
Most critics did not think Impression, Sunrise was one of the most notable pieces; it was briefly discussed only five times in all the reviews of the exhibition.
However, this idyllic perspective of the exhibition was not the view of all critics. Louis Leroy, for Le Charivari, is often quoted in his review on Monet's work. His article "The Impressionist Exhibition" is written as a dialogue from the imaginary perspective of an old-fashioned painter, shocked at the works of Monet and his associates:
Leroy's review is a covert backhand at the progressiveness of Impression, Sunrise, and is often attributed with the using the term impressionism for the first time.
Jules Castagnary for Le Siècle wrote that the group of painters could be described by no other word beside the new term impressionists, since they rendered the "sensation evoked by the landscape" rather than the landscape. He claimed that "The very word has entered their language: not landscape, but impression, in the title given in the catalog for M. Monet's Sunrise. From this point of view, they have left reality behind for a realm of pure idealism", typified by Monet's Impression, Sunrise. Evoking the name of Impression, Sunrise, but also providing stylistic connections, the later paintings are similarly "quite summary and economical in handling, and depict particularly hazy or misty effects" that is characteristic of Monet's impressionism in particular.