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The Train in the Countryside by Monet
The Train in the CountrysideOil on canvas, 1871 The Train in the Snow is Monet's first railway painting. Utterly simply, it shows a train on the Paris-Saint-German line, with it's typical two-tier coaches, running along a raised section of track. It was Baudelaire who exhorted the young painters to depict scenes of modern life, and the group led by Manet, who met regularly at the Café Guerbois, devoted many a long evening to discussing the significance of modernity. No doubt it was in response to one of these conversations that Monet painted this scene of a train in the countryside. In the age of the machine, what could be more modern than the railways? As early as 1844 Turner had painted his famous Rain, Steam and Speed, transforming the Great Western locomotive into a fantastic apparition emerging from swirling clouds of vapour. The Train in the Countryside by Monet dates from 1870, shortly before the painter left to spend the summer in Trouville. Pissarro, van Gogh and Bonnard were not far behind him in experimenting with related motifs. Monet himself returned to the theme on several later occasions, notably with his study of a train crossing an iron bridge over the Seine, painted in Argenteuil in 1874, and in a snowscape strongly reminiscent of Turner that shows a locomotive standing in the station at Argenteuil. His culminating achievement is the series of views of the Gare Saint-Lazare, painted in 1877, a superbly personal treatment of the subject. Own An Original Re-Creation
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Hand-painted in oils by a professional artist
