Le Havre was still asleep when Claude Monet looked out the window. The first rays of the sun broke through the autumn mist, as it does at dawn. France's largest transhipment port was slowly coming to life. That opportunity could not have been missed! The painter quickly set up his easel (or perhaps he had already prepared it before) and started to work. Casual brushstrokes, a thin layer of paint, and the technique characteristic for the sketch prove that he was in a hurry. Only a few hours later, the painting that would turn the hierarchy of European Art upside down was finished. The godfather of Impressionism could now test the quality of the hotel bed or, with a sense of a well-started day, go downstairs and drink his morning coffee.

Today it is hard to believe that hedonistic and easy-to-understand art, being the quintessence of the French spirit, was born in such pain and with the resistance of the overwhelming majority of Parisians (let alone all the provincials). In 1865, 1866 and 1868, Monet exhibited two of his works at the Salon. However, the jurors consistently rejected his paintings as contrary to the only right academic models. What else could expect a fractious student who despised the old masters, never went anywhere near the Louvre, and wanted to create "as a bird sings"?

His father lost his patience, and when Claude announced that he had a child with a model and was going to marry her, he simply disinherited him (although he had a daughter with a maid himself). The bourgeois family hoped that Junior would regain his senses and go down to earth to do some decent work instead of chasing an artistic mirage. Unfortunately, he was stubborn and didn't give up. In love with bright colours and natural light effects, he explored their nature for the next 60 years, as long as he could see and hold brushes in his hand.

In all fairness, the Impressionists did not discover the poetry of nature and ordinary people’s lives. This is thanks to the Barbizonians, who are older by a generation. Monet's mentor, Eugène Boudin - a Norman landscape self-taught painter, preached that the future of painting was outdoor work.

Wednesday the 13th

The war with Prussia, the stake of which - as it turned out - was the unification of Germany, separated the rebellious young artists. Frédéric Bazille went to the front and died. His friend Monet was not eager to fight. Ten years earlier, he had allowed himself to be recruited into the army and was even sent to Algeria. Monet spent almost a year there but did not smell the gunpowder. He contracted typhus and was sent home. His aunt made the appropriate payment so the army would leave Claude alone.

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  This time he decided to wait out the turmoil abroad. In London, he was truly impressed by William Turner's paintings, and in the Netherlands, by the Japanese prints that the clerks in the colonial shops used as wrapping paper. Fascination with Far Eastern woodcuts united those despised by Salon. They were even called "Japanese".

The 31-year-old Manet returned to Paris after the collapse of the Commune. He still wore a well-trimmed beard and had reasons to believe that the worst was over. He was no longer drowning in debt, starving and scaring his friends with suicidal thoughts. He sold his works for an average of three hundred francs apiece. The inheritance of four thousand franks from his wife’s father also improved the situation.

Claude could fulfil his dream of hiring a house in the capital's suburbs. In Argenteuil, he painted like crazy: the Seine, the port, bridges, streets, gardens, orchards, fields and his wife Camille (who was not destined to live long). Sometimes he went to Normandy, especially to Rouen, Étretat and Le Havre. In the latter place, he spent his childhood, and his father had a grocery store.

On one of those visits, Monet stayed at the Hôtel de l'Amirauté. It was not cheap accommodation, but due to its location at the coast, it guaranteed a beautiful view. This is where the painting we know as the “Impression. Sunrise" was created. The author dated it to 1872. For our era, obsessed with data calculated in steps of seconds and millimetres, that information is reprehensibly laconic.

The discussion whether it was the sunset (caused by the incorrect entry in the auction catalogue) and also how it was possible that the painter did not show off his work for over a year, lasted a long time. Finally, the experts - based on the analysis of the position of the sun and the fact that the water lock allowing transatlantic ships to enter the port was open - have established the following: Monet picked up a paintbrush on November 13 at about half past seven in the morning, and the rented room was on the fourth or third floor of the hotel.

Wallpaper better than Monet

In the spring of 1874, the situation in Paris was not encouraging for any artistic experiments. The country licked its wounds. Only two years earlier, the empire had collapsed. The blood of radicals, their hostages and random victims flowed through the streets of the capital. The German occupiers returned home only when they were promised a gigantic contribution. As a souvenir of the victory, they took Alsace and Lorraine.

The French wanted to forget this humiliation, they called for national consolidation. Paradoxically, during the reign of the liberal Napoleon III, painters had more freedom than in the first years of the republic. They learned about it when they did what they had been planning for a long time: they exhibited their works, leaving them to the public's judgement.

Monet was one of the ringleaders of the association, founded by the artists who refused to pursue the lofty themes beloved by the critics and the establishment. They were disgusted by the prospect of seeking the protection of people they valued very little, so two weeks before the opening of the official Salon, they opened their own exhibition. Many of them were secretly dreaming of joining the mainstream but on their own terms. Monet had a reputation as the most talented and determined one. The meetings of the Association were held in his apartment.

The confrontation of dreams with reality took place on April 15 at The Boulevard des Capucines 35. Parisians knew this address very well; the premises used to house the atelier of the famous photographer Nadar. Thirty artists, including Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot, exhibited 165 works. At the last moment, when the catalogue was already printed, it came to light that one of Monet's five works was untitled. He hastily decided to call it "Impression".

The exhibition was not particularly successful. Within a month, it was visited by 1,500 spectators, buying ten paintings altogether. Airing the scandal, many journalists came to watch this happen. Contrary to the legend, reviews were rather mixed. The critics were most intrigued by Monet's work. One praised him, though he confused him with Manet (from whom Claude often borrowed money). The greatest perfidy was shown by 51-year-old Louis Leroy, who dabbled in painting himself. In his account, he tormented the artists, quoting the words of the landscape painter with whom he supposedly visited the exhibition.

"Wallpaper in the embryonic stage of production is something perfectly finished compared to this view" - this expert had said that about the "Impression". So Leroy titled his article "The Impressionist Exhibition". The text was published in a satirical magazine. Still, the neologism was picked up by another reviewer who, not playing with irony, wrote directly that such art fills him with disgust and prefers the scribbles of a small child to such works propagating chaos. Using any colours and shapes contradicts the very idea of ​​painting.

The artists' hopes that the exhibition would turn out to be the breakthrough failed. Conservative public opinion remained unfazed.

Monet could take comfort in the fact that "Impression" was among the sold paintings. Ernest Hoschedé, a lace and tulle dealer and owner of a large department store, spent as much as 800 francs on it. He also proposed that the painter would decorate his residence near Paris – the château Rottembourg. Monet spent many weeks there, only to find out at the end that the host fell into temporary difficulties. He was chased by creditors and could pay the honorarium only "in goods".

Bankrupt and his wife

Two years later, in Le Figaro, one could read that the impressions provided by the Impressionists "could be compared to those made by a cat running over the piano keyboard or a monkey that got into a box of paints". During the auction, organised in one of the Parisian hotels, there was a regular fight between supporters and opponents of the "art of the future".

The former were publicly supported only by the writer Emil Zola. Monet again fell into financial trouble, but it should be noted that he was not a very frugal man. At Argenteuil, he employed a maid, servant and gardener.

Four years after acquiring the “Impressions”, Hoschedé declared bankruptcy. His estate was auctioned off, and a collection of 16 Monet paintings went under the hammer.

Ernest and Claude rented a house together in Vétheuil and lived there with their families. Camille died shortly after giving birth to her second son. Hoschedé was often away on business, leaving Monet alone with Mrs Hoschedé and seven children. Bohemian Paris buzzed with rumours, which the widower denied, but the end result was that he proposed to Alice after Ernest's death and the proposal was accepted.

The Auror of the "Impressions" lived long enough to see the economic changes and died as a respected and wealthy man. He proved to the sceptics that even a haystack could be pure poetry if properly painted. Paintings by Monet and his colleagues became a good investment, especially when calculated in dollars.

A few months before his death, he said: "My merit is only that I painted from nature, trying to convey the impressions of the most ephemeral effects, and I am very sorry that I gave the name to a group of artists, most of whom had nothing to do with impressionism." .

And what about the canvas that critics considered as a sketch for real work? For 210 francs, it became the property of Dr Georges de Bello, who collected Impressionist works before they became fashionable.

In 1957, his daughter Victorine donated the entire collection to the Musée Marmottan in Paris. Nine years later, Monet's son Michel deposited the paintings inherited from his father in the same institution. As a result of these donations, over 300 canvases of the precursor of Modern Art found a place under one roof.

Towards the sun

In broad daylight on October 27, 1985, five masked men with pistols burst into the museum. They terrorised staff and visitors in order to seize nine paintings, including the “Impression, Sunrise”. The robbery was organised perfectly well, but the loot turned out to be unsellable. After five years, the police found the paintings in Corsica, two of them badly damaged.

Strangely enough, the only painting by Monet in Poland was also stolen. The perpetrator cut out the "Beach in Pourville", hanging in the National Museum in Poznań, to enjoy it in solitude for nine years. He was only caught because he left his fingerprints at the crime scene.

Musée Marmottan Monet, having a collection of well-known and popular (although - as it turned out - insufficiently protected) works, could rest on its laurels. Fortunately, the museum has bigger ambitions and regularly organises themed exhibitions. It was decided to celebrate the jubilee of "Impressions" with an exhibition entitled "Facing the Sun". How did Dürer, Rubens, Vernet, Friedrich, Courbet, Signac, Munch or Miró look at the fireball without which life on Earth would be somewhat difficult? Everyone perceived it differently and in their own way. The fact that there is no one universal formula is partly due to the revolution started 150 years ago by Monet and company.

The exhibition "Face au Soleil. Un astre dans les arts” at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris is open until January 29, 2023. From February 25 to June 11, it will be on view in Potsdam under the title "Sonne. Die Quelle des Lichts in der Kunst”.

–Wiesław Chełminiak

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

–translated by Katarzyna Chocian