The Train in the Snow (The Locomotive)
Dublin Core
Title
The Train in the Snow (The Locomotive)
Subject
The train as a self-sufficient entity
Description
In Monet’s The Train in Snow, the train works its way through a snow-ridden landscape. It cuts the darkness with eye-like headlights. The heavy industrial-looking locomotive seems to be swiftly traversing a gloomy, wintery environment. TJ Clark stated that “the railway was an ideal subject because its artifacts could so easily be imagined as self-propelled or self-sufficient.” Monet’s train embodies this sentiment. The contrast between the geometric lines, black coloring, and heavy puffs of smoke to the wispy white snow is meant to demonstrate that the train is a self-sustaining product of modernity. In depicting a powerful and graceful machine, Monet is praising modern engineering achievements and the dependability of the train to transport Parisians to the suburbs. Monet personifies the train, creating a face through headlights. This is to illustrate that the train is an independent, autonomous entity. Though it may be filled with people and built by laborers, Monet wants to praise the “beast” (train) and its reliability as a self-sufficient mode of transportation. Monet evidences that the train can guarantee one's journey, whether it be to the summery Bougival or the winter, snow heavy Argenteuil.
Creator
Claude Monet
Source
TJ Clark, "The Environs of Paris," The Painting of Modern Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 147-204.
Date
1875
Contributor
Sofia Petrulla
Relation
https://www.marmottan.fr/notice/4017/
Gustave Caillebotte, Landscape with Railway Tracks 1872
Gustave Caillebotte, Landscape with Railway Tracks 1872
Citation
Claude Monet , “The Train in the Snow (The Locomotive),” Cornell ARTH 3625/6625, accessed May 16, 2024, https://cornellcolab.net/pariscaptialofmodernity/items/show/5668.