French Impressionism: Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”

The Route to Versailles, Louveciennes, 1869

In 1869, Pissarro moved to No. 22 on the road to Versailles in the Paris suburb of Louvciennes. He was joined by Claude Monet who was then at nearby Saint Michel. In the winter of 1869/70, they both painted snow scenes showing this roadway from varying angles. The road to Versailles, on the north side of the village, afforded a superb view of Paris in the distance. The impressionists inherited from the Barbizon artists of a generation earlier an interest in the representation of winter, particularly, the challenge of the rendering of snow. Pissarro’s early works are relatively rare because the German troops who had been billeted in his house on the road to Versailles during the Franco-Prussian War had wrecked many of them.

 La Maison De Piette À Montfoucault, 1874

De grosse Birnbaum in Montfoucault, 1876

Cultivated Land in Winter, a Man Carrying Fagots, 1877

Resting in the Woods at Pontoise, 1878

Near Rouen, 1883

Road at Eragny, Winter (1885)

Field of Oats in Eragny, 1885

View of the Village of Bazincourt - 1889

Setting Sun and Fog Eragny, 1891

Poplars, Morning, Eragny - 1893

The Meadows at Eragny, Apple Tree, 1894

The Boulevard Montmarte At Night, 1897

After spending six years painting in the rural setting of Éragny, Pissarro returned to Paris, where he produced several series of the “grands boulevards.” As Pissarro surveyed the view from his lodgings at the Grand Hôtel de Russie in early 1897, he marveled that not only could he “see down the whole length of the boulevards” but he had “almost a bird’s-eye view of carriages, omnibuses, people, between big trees, big houses that have to be set straight.” From February through April, he set out to record—in two views of the boulevard des Italiens to the right, and fourteen of the boulevard Montmartre to the left—the spectacle of urban life as it unfolded below his window.

Vue de Bazincourt en hiver, 1898

Avenue de l’Opera, Effect of Snow, 1898

Le Jardin Des Tuileries, Effet De Neige

Brouillard à l’Hermitage, Pontoise

Hyde Park, London

La Maison De Piette À Montfoucault

Landscape at Éragny

Self-Portrait, 1903