Camille Pissarro

Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist on May 18, 1899)

Thence by descent

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, 1901, no. 13

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, 1904, no. 114

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, 1956, no. 100

Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, vol. V, Paris, 1988, no. 1637 p. 26 (no. 9)

Reinhard Holl, L'Oeuvre d'art internationale, October-November 1904, p. 16

Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son art - Son oeuvre, vol. 1, Paris, 1939, no. 1103, catalogued p. 234; vol. 2, no. 1103, illustrated pl. 220

Richard R. Brettell and Joachim Pissarro, The Impressionist and the City, Pissarro's Series Paintings (exhibition catalogue), Dallas Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Royal Academy of Arts, London,1992, fig. 80, illustrated in color p. 112

Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, vol. III, Paris, 2005, no. 1251, illustrated p. 779

The canvas is lined. Under ultra-violet light, there are small retouchings along the upper horizontal framing edge and in the upper left corner. Otherwise, this work is in excellent condition.
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A panoramic view of the Pavillon de Flore with the Denon wing of the Louvre museum in the background and the buildings on the "rive gauche" embankment is the subject of this spectacular composition from 1899.  The present canvas is the first in a series depicting the environs of the Tuileries Gardens that was completed not long after Pissarro rented a nearby apartment at the end of 1898.  Rather than taking hotel rooms as he had done on the past, Pissarro now made his stay in Paris more permanent so that he could devote his time to studying and painting the incomparable cityscape.  Upon completion of the Louvre series, Durand-Ruel exhibited several of Pissarro's views at an exhibition in 1901.

From his letter to his son Lucien dated December 4, 1898, we can sense the excitement Pissarro must have felt as he describes the view from his window: "We have engaged an apartment at 204 rue de Rivoli, facing the Tuileries, with a superb view of the Garden, the Louvre to the left, in the background the houses on the quais behind the trees, to the right the Dôme des Invalides, the steeples of Ste. Clothilde behind the solid mass of chestnut trees. It is very beautiful. I shall paint a fine series" (C. Pissarro, quoted in Pissarro (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1980, p. 146).

With his studio now established in the heart of the capital, Pissarro focused intently on the ever-changing temperament of the city from hour to hour and season to season.   Moving from one window to the next, he studied the dynamic urban landscape from three slightly different vantage points, all portrayed in his series of the Tuileries: a frontal view, showing the Bassins des Tuileries (fig. 2), a view of the Louvre's Pavillon de Flore and the southern Denon wing in the background and, moving eastwards, a view of the Pavillon de Marsan to the left, with Jardin du Carrousel in the center and the Denon wing in the distance.

The compositional basis for this work is found in the vertical, horizontal and circular patterns of the Tuileries Gardens, originally designed by André Le Nôtre in the second half of the seventeenth century.  Writing about this series, Joachim Pissarro observed that the Tuileries Gardens series "offered a chance to study the interaction of the rectangular and the circular. A succession of rectangles are seen interlocked with each other: the anciens jardins réservés lead into the Jardin du Carrousel and to the Place du Carrousel and the Cour Napoléon through the Arc du Carrousel. These rectangles stretching along the Seine and confined between the Allée des Orangers and the Terrasse du Bord de l'Eau are offset by circular structures: the Grand Bassin rond or the other smaller bassins, as well as by strong cruciform or orthogonal structures, which confer on these views a solid, architectonic strength. These structures are themselves counterbalanced by foliage or entangled branches. The marvellously symmetrical layout of the Gardens was fragmented, disrupted and pluralised in Pissarro's paintings of them" (J. Pissarro, in The Impressionist and the City (exhibition catalogue), The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1992, p. 104). This composition, a very abstract organization of diverse forms, is enhanced by the subtle palette which recreates the vibrant, white atmosphere of a snowy day.