Hannah Reed

Period 7
1/12/17
The Saint-Lazare Station and Mont Sainte-Victoire
The Saint-Lazare Station is an oil on canvas painting that was painted in 1877 by Claude
Monet. The painting shows an ideal setting for someone who sought the changing effects of
light, movement, clouds of steam and a radically modern motif. What prevails here is really the
effects of color and light rather than a concern for describing machines or travelers in detail. The
painting appears intensely flat but also contains diagonal lines that recede and carry the eye back
creating depth. Monet focuses on the play of light, and the play of color. He does not use contour
lines and takes an almost abstract/ painterly approach.
Mont Sainte-Victoire was painted by Paul Czanne in 1902-04. Czanne divides his
composition into three roughly equal horizontal sections, which extend across the three-foot
wide canvas. A band of foliage and houses lies in the foreground; rough patches of yellow ochre,
emerald, and viridian green suggest the patchwork of an expansive plain and extend the
foregrounds color scheme into the middleground. The background contains contrasting blues,
violets and greys, the craggy mountain is seen surrounded by sky. The peak of the mountain is
pushed just to the right of center, and the horizon line inclines gently upwards from left to right.
In fact, a complicated counterpoint of diagonals can be found in each of the works bands, in the
roofs of the houses, in the lines of the mountain, and in the arrangement of the patches in the
plain, which connect foreground to background and lead the eye back evoking a sense of depth.

Both of these paintings are very impressionistic. The artists tried to capture what they saw. An
important aspect of the Impressionist painting was the appearance of quickly shifting light on the
surface of forms and the representation changing atmospheric conditions. The
Impressionists wanted to create an art that was modern by capturing the rapid pace of
contemporary life and the fleeting conditions of light. Had there been a camera, the artists would
have been able to capture the movements and details of the light and life while also containing
depth.