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PISSARRO AND ROUEN
While Pissarro was based primarily in Pontoise and depicted the suburban areas
surrounding Paris, he developed an ongoing interest with the city of Rouen. In
an effort to infuse his work with new themes, Pissarro first visited the Normandy
capital in 1883. The suggestion came from his contemporary and friend, Claude
Monet, who favored the city's majestic cathedral, stately bridges and bustling
life. Though Monet was chiefly occupied with Rouen's medieval architecture,
Pissarro focused his attention on more dynamic industrial scenes surrounding
the port and bridges. As a result of the positive reception of his first views of
Rouen exhibited in Paris in the mid-1880s, Pissarro repeated his visits to the city
in 1894, 1896 and 1898. He stayed there for months at a time, renting rooms in
several Right Bank hotels to gain differing perspectives for his work. The artist
compared Rouen to Venice, citing its visual beauty as well as its role as a muse.
The vibrancy of life in Rouen served as an ideal backdrop for Pissarro's
Impressionist masterworks. His paintings and prints include hallmarks of
modernity along the Seine, with a flood of steamboats, iron bridges like Pont
Boieldieu and the newly-constructed
Gare de Rouen Orléans
train station. Prints
like
Port de Rouen (avec Cheminées)
and
Quai de Paris, à Rouen
(see lots 278
and 283 respectively) are dominated by smokestacks, steam and laborers. These
compositions are sincere depictions of the activity behind the city's ornate
facades on which other artists often focused. Through his art, Pissarro gave
visibility to the technology and anonymous laborers driving progress in France
at the end of the 19th century. His embrace of industrial, urban subjects
breathed variety into Pissarro's
oeuvre
, which generally centered on rural villagers,
but was consistent in his goal of authenticity, furthering a Socialist agenda in
addition to his Impressionist aesthetic principles.
Rouen provided Pissarro with an effervescent palette with which he could
experiment with light and atmosphere. Like the other Impressionists, Pissarro
rejected the Academy's established rules of representation and favored a loose,
spontaneous style. While in Rouen, he expanded his ambient style through
architectural studies including
Rue Géricault, à Rouen
and
Rue Molière, à Rouen
(see lots 285-289). These prints reflect diverse moods due to Rouen's climate;
Pissarro was said to have worked on several compositions at once depending
on the time of day and weather conditions so that he had ample opportunity to
portray fog, rain, sunsets and other effects. The result is an elegant treatment
of seemingly simple scenes of urban beauty. During one of his visits, Pissarro
wrote, "What particularly interests me is the motif of the iron bridge in wet
weather with all the vehicles, pedestrians, workers on the embankments, boats,
smoke, haze in the distance; it's so spirited, so alive." He captured these scenes
with a consistent intensity on each of his visits to the city.