Image: public domain, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago

Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare

Claude Monet, 1877

A steam train from Normandy has just pulled into a Paris station, and a great cloud of white smoke rises under the glass-and-iron roof. Claude Monet painted the steam, the daylight and the crowds on the platforms with quick, loose brushstrokes in blues, greens and greys.

🧩 Build this painting as a puzzle

🏛 Enter the 3D museum

🎧 Audio guide available in the 3D museum

Did you know?

Monet painted twelve known views of the Gare Saint-Lazare, all in 1877.
He asked the director of the railway company for permission and was allowed to paint inside the station.
He rented a studio near the station, and his friend, the painter Gustave Caillebotte, helped pay for it.
Several of the station paintings were shown at the third Impressionist exhibition in Paris in April 1877.
Look at the lower left corner: Monet signed and dated it "Claude Monet 77".
The Chicago collector Martin A. Ryerson bought it in 1911 and left it to the Art Institute of Chicago after his death.

About the artist

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was born in Paris, grew up by the sea in Le Havre, and from 1883 lived and painted at Giverny in Normandy.

He was the guiding spirit of Impressionism, which took its name from his painting Impression, Sunrise, and he is beloved for his haystacks, cathedrals and water lilies.

As a teenager he earned pocket money drawing funny caricatures of local people, and later he lovingly tended a garden with a Japanese bridge that he painted again and again.

Claude Monet ›

Where it is today: The Art Institute of Chicago · Museum page