Interregional Academy of Personnel Management
Severodonetsk Institute
Department of General Education and Humanities
Test on cultural studies
Impressionism as a movement in art
Completed:
group student
IN23-9-06 BUB (4. Od)
Sheshenko Sergey
Checked:
Ph.D., Assoc.
Smolina O.O.
Severodonetsk 2007
Introduction
4. Post-Impressionism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Applications
Introduction
An important phenomenon European culture second half of the 19th century was the artistic style of impressionism, which became widespread not only in painting, but in music and fiction. And yet it arose in painting. Impressionism (French impressionism, from impression - impression), a movement in art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries. It happened in French painting late 1860s - early 1870s (the name arose after the exhibition of 1874, at which C. Monet’s painting “Impression. Rising Sun").
Signs of the impressionistic style are the absence of a clearly defined form and the desire to convey the subject in fragmentary strokes that instantly capture each impression, which, however, revealed their hidden unity and connection when reviewing the whole. As a special style, impressionism with its principle of the value of the “first impression” made it possible to conduct the narrative through details that were, as it were, grabbed at random, which apparently violated the strict consistency of the narrative plan and the principle of selecting the essential, but with their “lateral truth” imparted extraordinary brightness to the story and freshness.
In temporary arts, the action unfolds in time. Painting seems to be able to capture only one single moment in time. Unlike cinema, it always has one “frame”. How can it convey movement? One of these attempts to capture real world in its mobility and variability was an attempt by the creators of a movement in painting called impressionism (from the French impression). This movement brought together various artists, each of whom can be characterized as follows. An impressionist is an artist who conveys his direct impression of nature, sees in it the beauty of variability and impermanence, and recreates the visual sensation of brightness. sunlight, games of colored shadows, using a palette of pure unmixed colors, from which black and gray have been banished. Sunlight streams and vapor rises from the damp earth. Water, melting snow, plowed earth, swaying grass in the meadows do not have clear, frozen outlines. Movement, which was previously introduced into the landscape as an image of moving figures, as a result of the action of natural forces - wind, driving clouds, swaying trees, is now replaced by peace. But this peace of inanimate matter is one of the forms of its movement, which is conveyed by the very texture of painting - dynamic strokes of different colors, not constrained by the rigid lines of the drawing.
1. The origin of impressionism and its founders
The formation of impressionism began with the painting by E. Manet (1832-1893) “Luncheon on the Grass” (1863). New style painting was not immediately accepted by the public, who accused artists of not knowing how to paint and throwing paints scraped from the palette onto the canvas. Thus, Monet’s pink Rouen cathedrals, the best of the artist’s painting series (“Morning,” “At First Rays of Sun,” “Afternoon”), seemed implausible to both viewers and fellow artists. The artist did not seek to represent the cathedral in different time day - he competed with the masters of Gothic to absorb the viewer in the contemplation of magical light-color effects. The façade of Rouen Cathedral, like most Gothic cathedrals, hides the mystical spectacle of the bright colored stained glass windows of the interior coming to life in the sunlight. The lighting inside the cathedrals changes depending on which side the sun is shining from, cloudy or clear weather. The word “impressionism” owes its appearance to one of Monet’s paintings. This painting was truly an extreme expression of the innovation of the emerging painting method and was called “Sunrise in Le Havre.” The compiler of the catalog of paintings for one of the exhibitions suggested that the artist call it something else, and Monet, crossing out “in Le Havre”, put “impression”. And several years after the appearance of his works, they wrote that Monet “reveals a life that no one before him was able to grasp, which no one even knew about.” An alarming spirit of birth began to be noticed in Monet's paintings new era. Thus, “serialism” appeared in his work as a new phenomenon of painting. And she focused on the problem of time. The artist’s painting, as noted, snatches one “frame” from life, with all its incompleteness and incompleteness. And this gave impetus to the development of the series as sequentially replacing each other. In addition to the Rouen Cathedrals, Monet creates the Gare Saint-Lazare series, in which the paintings are interconnected and complement each other. However, it was impossible to combine the “frames” of life into a single tape of impressions in painting. This became the task of cinema. Cinema historians believe that the reason for its emergence and widespread dissemination was not only technical discoveries, but also an urgent artistic need for a moving image, and the paintings of the Impressionists, in particular Monet, became a symptom of this need. It is known that one of the plots of the first cinema show in history, organized by the Lumière brothers in 1895, was “The Arrival of a Train.” Steam locomotives, a station, and rails were the subject of a series of seven paintings, "Gare Saint-Lazare" by Monet, exhibited in 1877.
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), together with C. Monet and A. Sisley, created the core of the impressionist movement. During this period, Renoir worked on the development of a vibrant, colorful artistic style with a feathery brushstroke (known as Renoir's iridescent style); creates many sensual nudes (“Bathers”). In the 80s, he increasingly gravitated towards the classical clarity of images in his work. Most of all, Renoir loved to paint children's and youthful images and peaceful scenes Parisian life("Flowers", "Young Man Walking with Dogs in the Forest of Fontainebleau", "Vase of Flowers", "Bathing in the Seine", "Lisa with an Umbrella", "Lady in a Boat", "Riders in the Bois de Boulogne", "Ball in Le Moulin de la Galette", "Portrait of Jeanne Samary" and many others). His work is characterized by light and transparent landscapes and portraits that glorify the sensual beauty and joy of being. But Renoir had the following thought: “For forty years I have been moving towards the discovery that the queen of all colors is black paint.” The name Renoir is synonymous with beauty and youth of that time human life when spiritual freshness and blossoming physical strength are in complete harmony.
2. Impressionism in the works of C. Pissarro, C. Monet, E. Degas, A. Toulouse-Lautrec
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) - representative of impressionism, author of light, pure-colored landscapes ("Plowed Ground"). His paintings are characterized by a soft, restrained palette. In the late period of his creativity he turned to the image of the city - Rouen, Paris (Boulevard Montmartre, Opera Passage in Paris). In the second half of the 80s. influenced by neo-impressionism. It also worked as a schedule.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) is a leading representative of impressionism, the author of landscapes that are subtle in color and filled with light and air. In the series of canvases “Haystacks” and “Rouen Cathedral”, he sought to capture fleeting, instantaneous states of the light-air environment at different times of the day. From the name of Monet's landscape Impression. The rising sun came about and the name of the movement is impressionism. In a later period, features of decorativism appeared in the work of C. Monet.
The creative handwriting of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is characterized by impeccably precise observation, the strictest drawing, sparkling, exquisitely beautiful color. He became famous for his freely asymmetrical angular composition, knowledge of facial expressions, poses and gestures of people different professions, accurate psychological characteristics: "Blue dancers", "Star", "Toilet", "Ironers", "Dancers' Rest". Degas - wonderful master portrait. Under the influence of E. Manet he moved to everyday genre, depicting the Parisian street crowd, restaurants, horse races, ballet dancers, laundresses, the rudeness of the smug bourgeois. If Manet's works are bright and cheerful, then in Degas they are colored with sadness and pessimism.
The work of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) is also closely related to impressionism. He worked in Paris, where he painted cabaret dancers and singers and prostitutes in his own special style, distinguished bright colors, boldness of composition and brilliant technique. Great success used his lithographic posters.
3. Impressionism in sculpture and music
A contemporary and ally of the Impressionists was the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). His dramatic, passionate, heroically sublime art glorifies the beauty and nobility of man, it is permeated with emotional impulse (the group “Kiss”, “Thinker”, etc.) he is characterized by the courage of realistic quests, the vitality of images, and energetic pictorial modeling. The sculpture has a fluid form, acquiring a seemingly unfinished character, which makes his work similar to impressionism and at the same time allows one to create the impression of the painful birth of forms from elemental amorphous matter. The sculptor combined these qualities with a dramatic design and a desire for philosophical reflection (“The Bronze Age,” “Citizens of Calais”). The artist Claude Monet called him the greatest of the greats. Rodin said: “Sculpture is the art of depressions and convexities.”
Impressionism (fr. impressionnisme, from impression- impression) - a movement in the art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, which originated in France and then spread throughout the world, whose representatives sought to develop methods and techniques that made it possible to most naturally and vividly capture the real world in its mobility and variability, to convey their fleeting impressions. Usually the term “impressionism” refers to a direction in painting (but this is, first of all, a group of methods), although its ideas also found their embodiment in literature and music, where impressionism also appeared in a certain set of methods and techniques for creating literary and musical works, in which the authors sought to convey life in a sensual, direct form, as a reflection of their impressions
The artist’s task at that time was to depict reality as believably as possible, without showing the artist’s subjective feelings. If he was ordered ceremonial portrait- then it was necessary to show the customer in a favorable light: without deformities, stupid facial expressions, etc. If it was a religious plot, then it was necessary to evoke a feeling of awe and amazement. If it’s a landscape, then show the beauty of nature. However, if the artist despised the rich man who ordered the portrait, or was an unbeliever, then there was no choice and all that remained was to develop his own unique technique and hope for luck. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century, photography began to actively develop and realistic painting began to gradually move aside, since even then it was extremely difficult to convey reality as believably as in a photograph.
In many ways, with the advent of the Impressionists, it became clear that art can have value as the subjective representation of the author. After all, each person perceives reality differently and reacts to it in their own way. It’s all the more interesting to see how in the eyes different people reflects reality and what emotions they experience.
The artist now has an incredible number of opportunities for self-expression. Moreover, self-expression itself has become much freer: take a non-standard plot, theme, tell something other than religious or historical topics, use your own unique technique, etc. For example, the impressionists wanted to express a fleeting impression, the first emotion. This is why their work is vague and seemingly unfinished. This was done in order to show an instant impression, when objects had not yet taken shape in the mind and only slight shifts of light, halftones and blurry contours were visible. Myopic people will understand me) imagine that you have not yet seen the object in its entirety, you see it from afar or simply do not look closely, but you have already formed some kind of impression about it. If you try to depict this, it is likely that you will end up with something like impressionist paintings. Some kind of sketch. That’s why it turned out that for the impressionists, what was more important was not what was depicted, but how.
The main representatives of this genre in painting were: Monet, Manet, Sisley, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne. Separately, it is necessary to note Umlyam Turner as their predecessor.
Speaking of the plot:
Their paintings presented only the positive aspects of life, without affecting social problems, including such as hunger, disease, death. This later led to a split among the Impressionists themselves.
Color schemes
The Impressionists paid great attention to color, fundamentally abandoning dark shades, especially black. Such attention to the color scheme of his works brought the color itself to a very important place in the picture and pushed further generations of artists and designers to be attentive to color as such.
Composition
The impressionist composition was reminiscent of Japanese painting, complex compositional schemes were used, other canons (not golden ratio or center). In general, the structure of the picture has become more often asymmetrical, more complex and interesting from this point of view.
Composition among the Impressionists began to have a more independent meaning; it became one of the subjects of painting, in contrast to the classical one, where it more often (but not always) played the role of a scheme according to which any work was built. At the end of the 19th century, it became clear that this was a dead end, and the composition itself could carry certain emotions and support the plot of the picture.
Forerunners
El Greco - because he used similar techniques in applying paint and acquired the color from him symbolic meaning. He also distinguished himself with a very original manner and individuality, which the impressionists also strived for.
Japanese engraving - because it gained great popularity in Europe in those years and showed that a picture can be constructed according to completely different rules than the classical canons of European art. This applies to composition, use of color, detailing, etc. Also, in Japanese and generally oriental drawings and engravings, everyday scenes were much more often depicted, which was almost absent in European art.
Meaning
The Impressionists left a bright mark on world art by developing unique techniques letters and having a huge influence on all subsequent generations of artists with their bright and memorable works, a protest against classical school And unique work with color. Striving for maximum spontaneity and accuracy in conveying the visible world, they began to paint mainly in the open air and raised the importance of sketches from life, which almost replaced traditional type paintings carefully and slowly created in the studio.
Consistently clarifying their palette, the Impressionists freed painting from earthy and brown varnishes and paints. Conventional, “museum” blackness in their canvases gives way to an infinitely diverse play of reflexes and colored shadows. They have expanded the possibilities immeasurably visual arts, revealing not only the world of sun, light and air, but also the beauty of London fogs, the restless atmosphere of life big city, the scattering of its night lights and the rhythm of incessant movement.
Due to the very method of working in the open air, the landscape, including the city landscape they discovered, occupied a very important place in the art of the Impressionists. One should not, however, assume that their painting was characterized only by a “landscape” perception of reality, for which they were often reproached. The thematic and plot range of their work was quite wide. Interest in people, and especially in modern life France, in a broad sense, was characteristic of a number of representatives of this trend. His life-affirming, fundamentally democratic pathos clearly opposed the bourgeois world order.
At the same time, impressionism and, as we will see later, post-impressionism are two sides, or rather, two successive time stages of that fundamental change that marked the boundary between the art of New and Contemporary times. In this sense, impressionism, on the one hand, completes the development of everything after the Renaissance art, the leading principle of which was the reflection of the surrounding world in visually reliable forms of reality itself, and on the other hand, it is the beginning of the largest revolution in the history of fine art after the Renaissance, which laid the foundations for a qualitatively new art. stage -
art of the twentieth century.
Impressionism is a movement in art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The birthplace of the new direction of painting is France. Naturalness, new methods of conveying reality, ideas of style attracted artists from Europe and America.
Impressionism developed in painting, music, literature, thanks to famous masters– for example, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Artistic techniques, used for painting, make the canvases recognizable and original.
Impression
The term "impressionism" initially had a disparaging connotation. Critics used this concept to refer to the creativity of representatives of the style. The concept first appeared in the magazine “Le Charivari” - in a feuilleton about the “Salon of the Rejected” “Exhibition of the Impressionists”. The basis was the work of Claude Monet “Impression. Rising Sun". Gradually, the term took root among painters and acquired a different connotation. The essence of the concept itself has no specific meaning or content. Researchers note that the methods used by Claude Monet and other impressionists took place in the work of Velazquez and Titian.
Just a year ago, the phrase “Russian Impressionism” grated on the ears of the average citizen of our vast country. Every educated person knows about light, bright and fast-moving French impressionism, can distinguish Monet from Manet and recognize Van Gogh's sunflowers from all the still lifes. Someone heard something about the American branch of the development of this direction of painting - more urban landscapes of Hassam and portrait images of Chase compared to the French ones. But researchers still argue about the existence of Russian impressionism.
Konstantin Korovin
The history of Russian impressionism began with the painting “Portrait of a Chorus Girl” by Konstantin Korovin, as well as with misunderstanding and condemnation of the public. Seeing this work for the first time, I. E. Repin did not immediately believe that the work was executed by a Russian painter: “Spaniard! I see. He writes boldly and juicily. Wonderful. But this is just painting for painting's sake. A Spaniard, however, with a temperament...” Konstantin Alekseevich himself began to paint his canvases in an impressionistic manner back in student years, being unfamiliar with the paintings of Cezanne, Monet and Renoir, long before his trip to France. Only thanks to the experienced eye of Polenov, Korovin learned that he was using the French technique of that time, which he came to intuitively. At the same time, the Russian artist is given away by the subjects that he uses for his paintings - the recognized masterpiece “Northern Idyll”, painted in 1892 and stored in Tretyakov Gallery, demonstrates to us Korovin’s love for Russian traditions and folklore. This love was instilled in the artist by the “Mamontov circle” - a community of creative intelligentsia, which included Repin, Polenov, Vasnetsov, Vrubel and many other friends famous philanthropist Savva Mamontov. In Abramtsevo, where Mamontov’s estate was located and where members of the artistic circle gathered, Korovin was lucky enough to meet and work with Valentin Serov. Thanks to this acquaintance, the work of the already accomplished artist Serov acquired the features of light, bright and swift impressionism, which we see in one of his early works – « Open window. Lilac".
Portrait of a chorus girl, 1883
Northern idyll, 1886
Bird cherry, 1912
Gurzuf 2, 1915
Pier in Gurzuf, 1914
Paris, 1933
Valentin Serov
Serov’s painting is permeated with a feature inherent only in Russian impressionism - his paintings reflect not only the impression of what the artist saw, but also the state of his soul in this moment. For example, in the painting “St. Mark’s Square in Venice,” painted in Italy, where Serov went to in 1887 due to a serious illness, cold gray tones predominate, which gives us an idea of the artist’s condition. But, despite the rather gloomy palette, the painting is a standard impressionistic work, since in it Serov managed to capture the real world in its mobility and variability, and convey his fleeting impressions. In a letter to his bride from Venice, Serov wrote: “In this century They write everything that is hard, nothing joyful. I want, I want, gratifying things, and I will write only gratifying things.”
Open window. Lilac, 1886
St. Mark's Square in Venice, 1887
Girl with peaches (Portrait of V. S. Mamontova)
Coronation. Confirmation of Nicholas II in the Assumption Cathedral, 1896
Girl illuminated by the sun, 1888
Bathing a horse, 1905
Alexander Gerasimov
One of the students of Korovin and Serov, who adopted their expressive brushwork, bright palette and sketch style of painting, was Alexander Mikhailovich Gerasimov. The artist’s creativity flourished during the revolution, which could not help but be reflected in the subjects of his paintings. Despite the fact that Gerasimov gave his brush to the service of the party and became famous thanks to his outstanding portraits of Lenin and Stalin, he continued to work on impressionistic landscapes that were close to his soul. Alexander Mikhailovich’s work “After the Rain” reveals to us the artist as a master of conveying air and light in a painting, which Gerasimov owes to the influence of his eminent mentors.
Artists at Stalin's dacha, 1951
Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, 1950s
After the rain. Wet terrace, 1935
Still life. Field bouquet, 1952
Igor Grabar
In a conversation about late Russian impressionism, one cannot help but turn to the work of the great artist Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar, who adopted many of the techniques of French painters of the second half of the 19th century century thanks to his numerous trips to Europe. Using the techniques of classical impressionists, in his paintings Grabar depicts absolutely Russian landscape motifs and everyday scenes. While Monet is painting blooming gardens Giverny, and Degas - beautiful ballerinas, Grabar depicts the harsh Russian winter with the same pastel colors and village life. Most of all, Grabar loved to depict frost on his canvases and dedicated an entire collection of works to it, consisting of more than a hundred small multi-colored sketches created at different times of the day and in different weather. The difficulty of working on such drawings was that the paint froze in the cold, so we had to work quickly. But this is precisely what allowed the artist to recreate “that very moment” and convey his impression of it, which is the main idea of classical impressionism. Igor Emmanuilovich’s painting style is often called scientific impressionism, because it gave great importance light and air on canvases and created a lot of research on color transmission. Moreover, it is to him that we owe the chronological arrangement of paintings in the Tretyakov Gallery, of which he was director in 1920-1925.
Birch Alley, 1940
Winter landscape, 1954
Frost, 1905
Pears on a blue tablecloth, 1915
Corner of the estate (Ray of the Sun), 1901
Yuri Pimenov
Completely non-classical, but still impressionism developed in Soviet time, a prominent representative of which is Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov, who came to depict “a fleeting impression in bed colors” after working in the style of expressionism. One of the most famous works Pimenov becomes the painting “New Moscow” of the 1930s - light, warm, as if painted with the airy strokes of Renoir. But at the same time, the plot of this work is completely incompatible with one of the main ideas of impressionism - refusal to use social and political themes. Pimenov’s “New Moscow” perfectly reflects social change in the life of the city, which have always inspired the artist. “Pimenov loves Moscow, its new, its people. The painter generously gives this feeling to the viewer,” writes artist and researcher Igor Dolgopolov in 1973. And indeed, looking at the paintings of Yuri Ivanovich, we are imbued with love for Soviet life, new neighborhoods, lyrical housewarmings and urbanism, captured in the technique of impressionism.
Pimenov’s creativity once again proves that everything “Russian” brought from other countries has its own special and unique path of development. So is French impressionism in Russian Empire and the Soviet Union absorbed the features of the Russian worldview, national character and everyday life. Impressionism as a way of conveying only the perception of reality in its pure form remained alien to Russian art, because every painting by Russian artists is filled with meaning, awareness, the state of the changeable Russian soul, and not just a fleeting impression. Therefore, next weekend, when the Museum of Russian Impressionism re-presents the main exhibition to Muscovites and guests of the capital, everyone will find something for themselves among Serov’s sensual portraits, Pimenov’s urbanism and landscapes atypical for Kustodiev.
New Moscow
Lyrical housewarming, 1965
Costume room Bolshoi Theater, 1972
Early morning in Moscow, 1961
Paris. Rue Saint-Dominique. 1958
Stewardess, 1964
Perhaps for most people the names Korovin, Serov, Gerasimov and Pimenov are still not associated with a specific art style, but the Museum of Russian Impressionism, which opened in May 2016 in Moscow, nevertheless collected the works of these artists under one roof.
Impressionism is one of the most famous destinations French painting, if not the most famous. And it originated in the late 60s and early 70s of the 19th century and largely influenced further development art of that time.
Impressionism in painting
The name itself " impressionism" was coined by a French art critic named Louis Leroy after attending the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, where he criticized Claude Monet's painting Impression: The Rising Sun ("impression" translated into French as "impression").
Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille are the main representatives of impressionism.
Impressionism in painting is characterized by fast, spontaneous and free strokes. The guiding principle was a realistic depiction of the light-air environment.
The impressionists sought to capture fleeting moments on canvas. If at that very moment an object appears in an unnatural color, due to a certain angle of incidence of light or its reflection, then the artist depicts it that way: for example, if the sun paints the surface of a pond in pink color, then it will be written in pink.
Features of impressionism
Speaking about the main features of impressionism, it is necessary to name the following:
- immediate and optically accurate image of a fleeting moment;
- doing all the work outdoors - no more preparatory sketches and finishing work in the studio;
- using pure color on the canvas, without pre-mixing on the palette;
- the use of splashes of bright paint, strokes of varying sizes and degrees of sweep, which visually add up to one picture only when viewed from a distance.
Russian impressionism
The standard portrait in this style is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Russian painting - “Girl with Peaches” by Alexander Serov, for whom impressionism, however, became just a period of passion. Russian impressionism also includes works by Konstantin Korovin, Abram Arkhipov, Philip Malyavin, Igor Grabar and other artists written at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
This affiliation is rather conditional, since Russian and classical French impressionism have their own specifics. Russian impressionism was closer to the materiality, objectivity of works, and gravitated towards artistic sense, while French impressionism, as mentioned above, simply sought to depict moments of life, without unnecessary philosophy.
In fact, Russian impressionism adopted from the French only the external side of the style, the techniques of its painting, but never assimilated the very pictorial thinking invested in impressionism.
Modern impressionism continues the traditions of classical French impressionism. In modern painting of the 21st century, many artists work in this direction, for example, Laurent Parselier, Karen Tarleton, Diana Leonard and others.
Masterpieces in the style of impressionism
"Terrace at Sainte-Adresse" (1867), Claude Monet
This painting can be called Monet's first masterpiece. It is still the most popular painting of early impressionism. The artist’s favorite theme is also present here - flowers and the sea. The canvas depicts several people relaxing on the terrace on a sunny day. Relatives of Monet himself are depicted on chairs with their backs to the audience.
The whole picture is flooded with bright sunlight. Clear boundaries between land, sky and sea are separated, organizing the composition vertically with the help of two flagpoles, but the composition does not have a clear center. The colors of the flags match surrounding nature, emphasizing the variety and richness of colors.
"Bal at the Moulin de la Galette" (1876), Pierre Auguste Renoir
This painting depicts a typical Sunday afternoon in 19th century Paris, at the Moulin de la Galette - a cafe with an open air dance floor, whose name corresponds to the name of the mill, which is located nearby and is a symbol of Montmartre. Renoir's house was located next to this cafe; he often attended Sunday afternoon dances and enjoyed watching happy couples.
Renoir demonstrates real talent and combines the art of group portraiture, still life and landscape painting in one picture. The use of light in this composition and the smoothness of the brush strokes the best way present style to a wide audience impressionism. This picture became one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at auction.
"Boulevard Montmartre at Night" (1897), Camille Pissarro
Although Pissarro is famous for his paintings depicting rural life, he also painted a large number of fine urban scenes in 19th century Paris. He loved to paint the city because of the play of light during the day and evening, because of the roads illuminated by both sunlight and street lamps.
In 1897, he rented a room on the Boulevard Montmartre and depicted him at different times of the day, and this work was the only work in the series captured after night had fallen. The canvas is filled with deep blue color and bright yellow spots of city lights. In all the paintings of the “boulevard” cycle, the main core of the composition is the road stretching into the distance.
The painting is now in the National Gallery in London, but during Pissarro’s lifetime it was never exhibited anywhere.
You can watch a video about the history and conditions of creativity of the main representatives of impressionism here:
