Impression, Sunrise

Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) is an oil on canvas painted by Claude Monet at Le Havre in 1872; shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, it gave the movement its name and is in the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.

Around November 1872 Monet stayed at the Hôtel de l'Amirauté in Le Havre, his home town, and painted a group of views of the port. From his window he looked south-east over the outer harbour in the early morning: the quays at left and right frame the composition, with the lock of the transatlantic dock at the centre, and cranes, chimneys and masts dissolve in the mist of an autumn dawn. The ferrymen's boats in the foreground and the bright orange sun with its reflection were added as he finished the picture, which was painted in a few hours on a ground of grey. In 2014 the astronomer Donald Olson and colleagues, using the sun's position, tide tables and weather records, dated the scene to about 7:35 a.m. on 13 November 1872.

In April 1874 Monet showed the canvas at the first exhibition of the Société anonyme in Nadar's former studios. Asked for a title for the catalogue, and feeling that it could hardly pass for a view of Le Havre, he answered, 'Put Impression.' The critic Louis Leroy seized on the word for his mocking review in Le Charivari of 25 April 1874, 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists'; days later Jules Castagnary used the term approvingly, and it came to stand for Monet and his circle.

The canvas measures 50 by 65 cm; the date beside the signature was added later. Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy gave it to the Marmottan in 1940. Stolen from the museum in 1985, it was recovered in 1990 and returned to display in 1991.