Monet and the Impresionist Cityscape

The Alte Nationalgalerie presents Monet’s three earliest paintings of Paris, which are viewed as marking the beginning of the Impressionist movement. They form the centrepiece of a small, focused show on the image of the city in Impressionism, featuring some 20 works of painting, photography, and the graphic arts.

In 1867, Claude Monet produced as series of paintings that opened up a new artistic perspective on the modern city. The artist visited the famous Louvre museum not, as was typical, to copy the works of the Old Masters hanging in its halls, but to paint the pulsating life on the streets of Paris from the balcony of the building. The results were three remarkable cityscapes depicting views of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, the Jardin de l’Infante, and the Quai du Louvre. In these works, Monet quite literally turned his back on art-historical tradition, directing his gaze instead to the present of the growing French metropolis.