Sights of Paris

Although known as the painter of French rural life, Pissarro made more cityscapes than most of his fellow Impressionists, especially at the end of his career. In the last years of his life, Pissarro painted nearly 150 views of Paris, divided into four series. Each corresponds to a location where the artist stayed: Boulevard Montmartre, Place du Théâtre Français, Tuileries Gardens, and the Pont-Neuf. He alternated light and weather effects with different angles, using his windows’ high vantage point to capture the essence of modern urban life.

His Parisian series were a commercial success, finally offering financial stability. However, it took the French government 100 years after Pissarro’s birth, in 1930, to also recognize his success with a retrospective at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Pissarro seemed to have few regrets about his life choices, writing years earlier: “What I’ve had to suffer is inconceivable, of course, but I have lived. . . and I think that, if I had to start all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to tread the same path.”

1895

The painter Gustave Caillebotte’s bequest to the Musée du Luxembourg includes 18 works by Pissarro—the French state only accepts seven.

1894–1906

After the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus is falsely accused of treason and banished from France, a rise of nationalism and antisemitism grips the country. The Dreyfus Affair divides the original impressionist group, and Pissarro’s friendship with Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tarnished by the two painters’ open antisemitism.

1903

On November 13, Pissarro dies from sepsis at the age of 73, surrounded by his family. He is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

The Boulevards Extérieurs, Effect of Snow 
1879 
Oil paint on canvas 
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris: Gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy, 1940, 4021
Camille Pissarro, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For the Impressionists, Paris became the beacon of modernity in the late 19^th century, with its widened boulevards and updated infrastructure. This painting is a testament to Pissarro’s early interest in city motifs, long before he began his later urban series. Here, he uses the architecture of the boulevard and the line of trees as structure, focusing his attention on rendering the bustling energy of the pedestrians and falling snow.

Boulevard Montmartre, Twilight
1897
Oil paint on canvas
Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, MB-Pis-06

Pissarro’s time in Paris coincided with a surge in anti-Semitism in France, after Captain Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was falsely convicted of high treason and imprisoned in 1895. Dreyfus never stopped protesting his innocence, and for twelve years French society was split over the case. The year after he made this painting, Pissarro wrote Lucien about hurrying past a mob shouting anti-Semitic chants in the streets. “Despite the grave turn of affairs, despite all of these anxieties,” he wrote, “I must work at my window.”

Morning Sun in the Rue Saint-Honoré, Place du Théâtre Français
1898
Oil paint on canvas
Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, 261 WH
Image courtesy akg-images

Pissarro painted 15 variations of this view, the intersection of the round Place du Théâtre Français and the Rue Saint Honoré. Here he plays with the interaction between the circular motion, the rectilinear perspective, and the use of the vertical format. He wrote Lucien, “I’m delighted to be able to have a go at Paris streets . . . so silvery, so bright, so vibrant with life, they’re altogether different from the boulevard—they’re completely modern!”

The Tuileries Gardens, Rainy Weather
1899
Oil paint on canvas
The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: Bequeathed by Mrs. W. F. R. Weldon, 1936, WA1937.73
Camille Pissarro, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Louvre, Morning, Sunlight (Second Series)
1901
Oil paint on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum: Museum purchase, 225:1916
Camille Pissarro, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Pissarro painted this scene from his new apartment on the Ile de la Cité, a natural island in the middle of the Seine River. From his northwest-facing window, the painter saw the Seine with the Louvre Museum in the background, depicted here with bystanders gazing at the palace-turned-museum. In The Louvre Under Snow, nearby, Pissarro transforms the same view with a wintry effect.

Afternoon Sunshine, Pont Neuf
1901
Oil paint on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Charlotte Dorrance Wright, 1978, 1978-1-24

From his north-facing window in his apartment on the Ile de la Cité, Pissarro had a plunging view of the Pont-Neuf, an iconic Parisian thoroughfare over the Seine. The crowd, on foot or by carriage, hurries on to the other side of the river, where the silhouette of a large department store, the Samaritaine, is visible. In this series, Pissarro played with watery reflections and the Parisian sky, and juxtaposed old and new, reminiscent of his time in Rouen.