The Studio Boat
Claude Monet
CLAUDE MONET, 1876. OIL ON CANVAS.
Monet put himself in the picture and broke a cardinal rule of the movement he had created. Though Impressionism did not attempt to replicate life, it valued the subjective truth of observation above all else, with an intense focus on light and colour to portray the titular ‘impression’ of the scene being painted. Here, Monet works en plein air, the act of painting outdoors, to capture the soft hues of the Siene in situ, playing with the light so exactly that we can sense the hour of the day in which he was painting. These works were not unusual in his oeuvre, his Siene paintings are numerous and the studio boat depicted was purchased by him in order to allow him to get greater views from which to execute a greater number of these works. Yet, in this painting, Money depicts himself in the studio boat he paints, betraying his observation with a depiction he could only imagine. He places himself in the centre of the scene, emphasising the creative role of the artist and the autonomy of painting as an act made by the individual.