By the Sea 1864

This landscape was painted by Claude Monet, though we are unsure when, and perhaps that is the point. Monet's impressionist paintings, such as this one, shifted the focus of art away from the grand narratives of history and mythology and towards the individual experience of the world. France in the late 19th century was undergoing rapid social and technological change. Traditional artistic institutions, like the Salon, were being challenged by artists who sought to capture the fleeting moments of modern life. Monet and his peers broke from academic painting, emphasizing light, color, and spontaneity. The loose brushstrokes and bright palette in this work reflect the impressionist desire to capture the sensory experience of a scene, rather than its precise details. This turn to the individual and sensory has political implications too. What happens to a society when each individual experience of life is seen as valid? To discover the answer, we must investigate more through primary source documents and critical analyses of the period.