A painting a day · No. 26 of 38
Impression, Sunrise
Claude Monet (1840–1926)
1872 · Oil on canvas · Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
The story
The port of Le Havre at dawn, painted fast. Shown in 1874 at an exhibition by artists the official Salon had rejected, it gave a mocking critic, Louis Leroy, a name for the whole group: the Impressionists.
Look closer
- On the front page this shows in black and white — and the orange sun almost vanishes. It is the same brightness as the grey sky around it, and stands out only by its colour.
- The small boats are a few strokes each.
- The reflection of the sun in the water is just a line of dashes.
Did you know
It was stolen from the Marmottan in 1985 and found in Corsica five years later.
Why we can show it
Claude Monet died in 1926. UK copyright lasts for the artist’s life plus 70 years, so even under today’s rules this painting would have been free for anyone to show since 1997. The photograph is a faithful copy of a flat work, which creates no new copyright. We do not store the picture: it comes from Wikimedia Commons each time it is needed. More on this.