As France celebrates, it doesn’t seem like 150 years since the first impressionist exhibition

A major exhibition opens at the Musée d’Orsay and there are shows and festivals across the country

To look at Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise is to live in its moment. You are right there in Le Havre docks at sunrise, in the purple misty light, as cranes and ships vaguely materialise in the weak light of the sun’s low red disc.

You could also note what it does not have. It does not have firm borders or precise forms: the people in boats are just blue dabs, as are the boats. The sunlight and ship masts mirrored in the water are spattered, incoherent.

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