Paintings I love
Camille Pissarro (French, 1830 – 1903)
AVENUE DE L’OPÉRA
Oil on canvas, 73.3 x 92.3
Reims, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Main actor of the impressionist movement with Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, painter of rural landscapes, launches with energy, at the age of sixty-six, in an enormous production of urban series. Seeking to capture the hustle and bustle of the city, he painted from the windows of hotel rooms, with a slightly elevated vantage point and a variety of angles. “I found a room at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre with a superb view of the Avenue de l’Opéra […] it’s modern in the heart of the matter !!! ». He produced ten views of this avenue and of the Place du Théâtre-Français until April 1898. Paul Durand-Ruel exhibited them in June in his famous gallery.
This work, then entitled “Sun, winter morning”, is the only one of this series to remain in France. Light diffuses irregularly over the second half of the stage with vibrant touches of ocher and pink, plays with the gray-blue of the zinc roofs and sidewalks, creating the contrasting atmosphere of “[…] these streets of Paris that ‘we used to say ugly, but which are so silvery, so luminous and so alive ”(ibid.). The band of sun on the ground cuts the space in a strong diagonal which energizes the composition: light on the buildings, full lighting on the left, light and shadow on the right. Very structured, the landscape respects the straightness of the Haussmann streets.
The skilful organization of the diagonal and vertical lines leads the eye from the Place du Théâtre-Français to the Opera in the background. The painter combines luminous movements with that of the street, the agitation of cars and pedestrians; their directions, the daring framing which cuts the advance of the cars in the foreground on the left reinforces this effect of life. A fleeting moment of the spectacle of the city, Pissarro translates here the poetic sensation and the emotion, carrying very far the impressionist art, freed from the grip of the subject.
Source: Reims, Musée des Beaux-Arts
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