An Arrival

I am in the travel bubble, between airport lounge, plane, taxi, hotel and meeting. I need to escape and clear my head. What better place than an art gallery and what better place, in the world, than the Art Institute in Chicago?

I am not sure exactly why this particular painting holds me. It is neither the largest nor the most well known in a room that has many of the greatest pieces of impressionist art on its walls. The painting is by Claude Monet and is entitled 'Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877'. It captures the moment of arrival of the train at the station in Paris. The train is in the mid-distance and the picture is dominated by the line of the glass roof and by the steam from the trains. In the background the outlines of the city, a bridge and other trains can be seen. Indistinct black clad figures flecked with red move around the train. There may be greetings, there may be luggage, there may be children. The impressionistic rendering gives the painting an immediacy, and catches a sense of movement and the particular moment in time. It captures above all a restless energy and of a society  transformed by the power of a technology. It is sophisticated, beautiful and simultaneously real and human.