Monet paints in or around the Gare…

Monet paints in or around the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris during the winter of 1876-77.

He experiments with producing a work in series, each representing the same motif under different light and weather conditions. (A total break with the customary Impressionist subjects, these works —e.g., Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare (1877, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, Art Institute of Chicago) portray the train engines belching smoke and steam in the great shed, recalling J. M. W. Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed -- The Great Western Railway of 1844 (and prefiguring the mechanical subjects painted by Italian Futurists after 1909.)