Ekphrasis Practice

True to the impressionistic style to which Impression: Sunrise gave rise, Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise conveys a snapshot of a fleeting moment in time, leaving it up to the imagination of the admirer to fill in the precise details. The canvas is filled with soft greens, blues, and grays, personifying the hushed quality of early morning. An ocean fills the foreground with Monet’s short, undisguised brushstrokes as the only elements disturbing the still water. Two small, shadowy boats sparsely occupied are the darkest images in the painting, depicted in a deep navy blue. The boats glide across the water towards the large ships depicted hazily in the background. The brushstrokes used to create the image of the ships’ foggy, gray-blue, tall masts rise until they become part of the sky. The sun sits just inches above the horizon, slightly to the right of the center of the painting. Depicted as a small, circular, bright red ball, the sun casts oranges, reds, and yellows upon a narrow strip of ocean and illuminates the sky just as it would in reality. Monet’s brushstrokes are boldly visible in the painting and the more closely one studies the image, the more evident its imperfections become. From a distance, however, the image becomes strikingly realistic. Ultimately, Monet’s Impression: Sunrise is the epitome of the Impressionistic style and embodies the qualities of movement in its purest form.