The Seine at Rouen (La Seine a Rouen) Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926)

Description of Claude Monet’s painting Seine en Rouen

This painting belongs to the early period of the artist’s work. Painted in 1872, it coincided with another, more famous painting by Claude Monet, Impression, which marked a new movement in Western European painting, Impressionism.

Monet sought not just to photographically translate nature onto the canvas. For the artist it was important to convey the impression of the surrounding objects, which at any moment could change their appearance under the influence of sunlight or just an unexpected neighborhood with other objects. Monet rejected the principles of academic painting, for which it was important to respect the transition from light to shadow.

The artist decided to trust his eye and thus rediscover nature. That’s why on the canvases Impressionist all the subjects as if a little blurred by the blowing of air. Monet’s image loses its smoothness, though it gains the ability to capture even the slightest movement in nature. Because of this there is an impression that in the paintings of the artist poured life itself, and the viewer is destined to the role of the observer for its endless stream.

All of the above features of Monet’s Impressionist paintings can be freely applied not only to such famous works of Monet, such as Breakfast on the Grass and Impression, but also to a canvas of the Seine in Rouen.

The painting depicts a river, which strikes the viewer with its vitality. The impression that both the wrong reflection in the water of the ships, and the green fabric of the leaves, barely swaying in the winds - are happening here and now, not more than a hundred years ago. Just a little more, and we will smell the grass, hear the noise of the leaves. Such a sensation is far from accidental, it is explained by the Impressionist technique that Monet used for his earlier works as well.