Boulevard de Rochechouart, 1880
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Pissarro seems to be everywhere this year–in Madrid at Museo Thyssen Bornemiszo, in Le Havre as part of the Normandie Impressionist Festival, and in this one work which is part of an exhibition at the Frick. PISSARRO’S PLACES are everywhere!
This work is not featured in the book, PISSARRO’S PLACES. Take this marvelous opportunity to see it in person. Photos are never as good!
The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark, March 12, 2013 to June 16, 2013
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A CLOSER LOOK
This beautiful pastel, Boulevard de Rochechouart, by Camille Pissarro deserves to be better known. This street is in the 9th arrondisement, an extension of the Boulevard de Clichy. He knew that area well because his pied-a-terre in Paris was located in the 18th just a few blocks north. He was living there with Julie and his family that winter.
What is interesting is that this work on paper was done relatively early in Pissarro’s career, in 1880. This is 13 years before Pissarro started his series of paintings in Paris. Yet in this one, he seems to be looking down on the street as he did in 1893 at Place du Havre. It would seem to be a foreshadowing of his work to come.
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Here is an interesting perspective as noted in Art Daily of March 12 (See URL below for the whole story):
PISSARRO CHALLENGES NOTIONS OF FINISH Like Millet, Camille Pissarro spent much of his career depicting peasants and unembellished scenes of rural life, although the urban cityscape seized his imagination as well. His large pastel Boulevard de Rochechouart depicts a slice of Paris in the years following Baron Haussman’s renewal of the city. For the writers and artists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the pulse and rhythm of the grands boulevards symbolized modernity, as eloquently expressed in Baudelaire’s famous essay of 1863 “Peintre de la Vie Moderne.” Through hatched, unblended strokes in a multitude of colors, Pissarro achieves a sense of transparency that captures the shifting sensations of a city in constant flux. His high viewpoint plunges the viewer into the melee of a tree-lined place, with carriages and omnibuses circulating and pedestrians dispersing into the streets. These anonymous urban dwellers dressed in dark clothing are mere blurs in the lively milieu, a world away from Millet’s monumental figure who commands the space of his environment. Although the pastel appears closer to a sketch than a completed work, Pissarro deliberately challenged accepted notions of finish. He signed and dated the sheet and exhibited it as an independent work alongside his paintings and smaller drawings in the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881.
More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=61243#.UT9-kVegv0c[/url]
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