Claude Oscar Monet was one of the founders of impressionism, among of which he is the most influential. Monet often digs out the attracting part from the ordinary landscape, the above painting Impression Sunrise is one of them. Monet exhibited Impression Sunrise in 1874, since then "Impressionism" was named after it, which was the most typical one of his Impression paintings.
Impression Sunrise
The painting depicted the scene of sunrise through the mist over Le Havre harbor. Direct painting strokes traced out the unclear background in morning fog, variety of colors made the surface infinite brightness, but the boats on the water was faintly visible. All of these detailed painted get a true picture of what the lights and colors gave to the artist's visual impression when the sun rose in the port city. The river, mist, the boats hidden in the fog, and the rising red sun in the distance, even the inverted image of red sun on the river, were all vivid and natural in the color and atmosphere, which offered us a sense of reality.
Chinese Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi wrote in his poem: A setting sun spreads on the water, in the sunlight the river sparkling, one-half turns deep blue color while one-half turns red. What Monet portrayed in Impression Sunrise is the scene that water rise and fall and light changes as the poem described. Since it broke the shackles of traditional painting, there was someone borrowed the title of the painting to make a crack that the innovative group of young artists which represented by Monet were impressionism.
