La Rue Montorgueil

La Rue Montorgueil was painted on 30 June 1878, during the Fête Nationale celebrating the Exposition Universelle of that year, and records the Rue Montorgueil in central Paris decked with French tricolour flags. Monet painted this canvas alongside La Rue Saint-Denis, depicting the same celebration from a different Parisian street, and both canvases are studies in the collective animation of colour and movement rather than individual portraiture. The format — a vertical street seen from above, its surface alive with flags and moving crowds — reduces the street to a vibrating pattern of blue, white, and red.

Monet eliminates identifiable individuals, reducing the crowds to gestural marks that convey movement and mass. The flags create the dominant colour rhythm, their tricolour bands becoming abstract linear and rectangular elements at the canvas's distance and angle. The overall effect approaches pure optical vibration.