The Boulevard Montmartre On A Winter Morning by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro painted Boulevard Montmartre, in the winter Morning of 1897. It was painted at a moment in the artist's career when he had already moved away from impressionism and pointillist visual approaches.

The Boulevard Montmartre Story

In February 1897, Pissarro accepted an invitation from his gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel to stay in a hotel room on the corner of Boulevard des Italiens and Rue Drouot to paint a series of paintings of Boulevard Montmartre at various times of the day.

Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien, suggesting that his gallery owner and art collector Paul Durand-Ruel could be intrigued by a series of Parisian cityscapes, notably since Claude Monet's Haystacks series had sold well.

As a result, the painting is part of a series of 14 canvases depicting the avenue in various seasons and lighting conditions.

The painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which received it as a gift from art collector Katrin S. Vietor, in 1960, in memory of her husband Ernest G. Vietor.

The Boulevard Montmartre On A Winter Morning Analysis

The painting measures 64.8 x 81.3 cm in size. The piece is signed and dated in the lower left, it was painted in oil paint on canvas.

The artist uses color to define curves while avoiding sharp lines, similar to the other compositions that depict the Boulevard Montmartre.

Clear contours are used to dampen and create an illusion of various buildings in the background, subtle for the human eye to grasp.

Boulevard Montmartre Afternoon Sunlight by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro tries to capture life as it happens in front of him: frantic, fluid, and always in motion. Impressionism is frequently defined as a transient glimpse of life rather than a thorough depiction.

Still portraits and big historical settings were no longer popular for some Impressionists. The Impressionists started depicting urban commonplaces. The boulevard is depicted in a viewpoint composition with a vanishing point in the upper left part of the painting.

The street's layout depicts a minor twist to the left. The city's winter environment is populated by many personalities, horse-drawn vehicles, and omnibuses.

From the perspective of the painter, the grids of windows in the homogeneous facade elements, the walkways provided with Morris columns and advertising pillars, and the street lamps located in the middle provide a distant perspective of the perfect urban metropolis of the time; the cityscape is bathed by brightness.

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Pissarro believed that everything can be painted at the same time, under constant inspection, with adjustments made gradually and incrementally.

The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning is a classic example of that technique, displaying Pissarro's use of quick, short strokes to depict that Parisian dawn and convey a sense of a world that is always moving.

The artist does not attempt to conceal incorrect strokes on his canvas, enhancing the fluidity, remoteness, and honesty of his work.

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Camille Pissarro Impressionist Artwork

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