Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare
In the first months of 1877 Monet set up his easel inside Gare Saint-Lazare, the busiest station in Paris, and painted it about a dozen times.
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About the series
The station was a few streets from his flat, and it was the terminus for the trains to Normandy and to Argenteuil, where he had lived for several years. He got permission from the railway company to work on the platforms and beside the tracks, and painted the iron and glass train shed, locomotives arriving under clouds of steam, and the Pont de l'Europe, the new iron bridge that crossed the lines just outside.
For painters of his generation the railway was the most modern subject there was. His friend Gustave Caillebotte had painted the Pont de l'Europe from street level the year before. Monet showed several of the station paintings at the third Impressionist exhibition in April 1877. The best known, La Gare Saint-Lazare, is in the Musée d'Orsay, and other versions are in the National Gallery in London, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Harvard Art Museums.
The station views are blue, grey and white, full of moving steam. They suit a modern room and sit well with black metal, glass and plain walls.
