
Time Transfixed
1938 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
A small steam locomotive comes out of a fireplace under the mantel clock, and the room around it is otherwise entirely ordinary.
★ 7.2

A small steam locomotive comes out of a fireplace under the mantel clock, and the room around it is otherwise entirely ordinary.

Monet set his easel up inside the station and painted the steam until the roof and the city beyond it had dissolved into it.

One puff of steam drifts across a curving shoreline, the modern world putting a small mark on a landscape that had none.