CAMILLE PISSARRO

(1830-1903)

Le Pont-Royal, temps gris lumineux

Footnotes

Provenance
Julie Pissarro Collection, Éragny (the artist's wife, by descent from the artist in 1904).
Jeanne Pissarro-Bonin Collection, Paris (the artist's daughter, a gift from the above in 1921).
E. J. Van Wisselingh & Co., Amsterdam, no. 5500.
Harry Stevenson Southam Collection, Ottawa, by 1939.
Martin and Sidney Zimet Collection, New York.
Sam Salz Inc., New York (acquired from the above in November 1961).
Daniel and Estelle Maggin Collection, New York (acquired from the above in December 1961).
Sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., New York, May 17, 1978, lot 54.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Exposition rétrospective d'oeuvres de Camille Pissarro, January 26 – February 14, 1914, no. 45.
Paris, Galerie Nunès & Fiquet, La Collection de Madame Veuve C. Pissarro, May 20 – June 20, 1921, no. 23 (titled 'Le Pont-Royal (soleil l'après-midi)').
New York, Wildenstein & Co. Inc., C. Pissarro, March 25 – May 1, 1965, no. 86 (titled 'La Seine à Paris, Pont Royal').
Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings, November 15, 1992 – January 31, 1993, no. 122 (later traveled to Philadelphia & London).
Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Camille Pissarro: Impressionist Innovator, October 11, 1994 – January 9, 1995, no. 111 (later traveled to New York).

Literature
L.-R. Pissarro & L. Venturi, Camille Pissarro, son art – son oeuvre, vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 1293, p. 260 (titled 'La Seine à Paris Pont Royal'; illustrated vol. II, pl. 251).
J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, vol. III, Paris, 2005, no. 1486 (illustrated p. 900).



In 1903, the final year of his life, Camille Pissarro produced seven oil paintings depicting the Pont-Royale from his room in the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire. The present work, entitled Le Pont-Royal, temps gris lumineux, showcases the view looking left from the window of his room, opposite the Louvre's Denon wing and the Pavillion de Flore on the Right Bank, with the Pont de Solferino in the background.

Le Pont-Royal, temps gris lumineux presents, as the title suggests, a view of the Pont-Royale against bright gray weather. The upper half of the composition is dominated by sky, balanced by a more detailed lower section, featuring the green water of the river, a gently arcing bridge, deciduous trees, and a busy road along dramatic orthogonal lines populated by jauntily bustling carriages and pedestrians. The rich impasto, tonal harmony, and stunning execution exemplify Pissarro's technical mastery and success at translating modern urban snapshots to painted canvas.

Pissarro painted his first scene of urban life in 1893, a departure from the rural scenes that had previously dominated his oeuvre. Of his 1,500 paintings, about 300 are urban views, specifically of Paris, Rouen, Dieppe, and Le Havre. Fewer than 30 of these paintings have been offered publicly in the last decade. In 1897, Pissarro began his work on series of Parisian landscapes, including the Saint-Lazare train station as seen from the Hôtel Restaurant Garnier, the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens as seen from the Hôtel de Russie, the Avenue de L'Opéra as seen from the Hôtel du Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens as seen from an apartment at 204 rue de Rivoli, and the Square du Vert Galan and the Pont Neuf as seen from an apartment on 28 Place Dauphine. Pissarro's urban landscapes were exclusively observed and painted from behind hotel windows. The artist would often select hotel rooms on upper levels to get a more expansive view. "Since I've been in Paris," Pissarro wrote to the critic and collector Julius Elias in 1902, "I've been able to work from my window incessantly; I've had effects that charmed me in their finesse. The view...is an absolutely exquisite and captivating subject" (Camille Pissarro quoted in M.A. Stevens (ed.), The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings, exh. cat., Dallas, 1992, p. 38). By working in hotel rooms above the busy streets, Pissarro removed himself from interaction with his subjects, and therefore granted himself, and the viewer, an expansive, divine perspective.

Painting indoors was necessitated by recurring health issues; managing an infection of the lacrimal duct from 1889 to the end of his life, he was advised to protect his eyes by avoiding drafts by his ophthalmologist, Dr. Parenteau. Such a change proved antithetical to Impressionist practice, in which working en plein air was characteristic. "Most importantly, working outdoors meant that he had an endless choice of subjects and viewpoints. In contrast, working behind a window meant that the artist could not move and that the view, likewise, remained the same. This is how Pissarro came to repeatedly paint the same motif–that is, to work in series" (quoted in C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts & C. Duvivier, Pissarro: The First Among the Impressionists, Paris, 2017, p. 159). In spite of these confines, Pissarro's urban depictions successfully convey the dynamic range of the city, each composition distinct from the next.

Regarding his interest in rendering the aesthetic nuance in urban landscapes, Pissarro wrote to his son Ludovic-Rodolphe in 1903, "You know that the motifs are of secondary interest to me. What I consider first is the atmosphere and the effects" (Pissarro quoted in M.A. Stevens, (ed.), The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings, exh. cat., Dallas, 1992, p. 38). "By playing on the changes of season and the variations in the weather and light," Joachim Pissarro wrote, "by multiplying the angles of vision and utilizing canvases of different formats, he created a stunning range of effects" (J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., Paris, 2005, vol. III, p. 826). Pissarro, a tireless worker, would often alternate between several paintings in progress as the light and weather conditions changed, capturing the city in all its seasonal iterations.

A foundational figure of the Impressionist movement, and the only artist to participate in all eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886, Pissarro served as a mentor to younger artists. Born in 1830, Pissarro was around a decade older than the majority of the Impressionists, with notable exception in similarly-aged Édouard Manet. Close friend and collaborator Paul Cézanne declared to art dealer Ambroise Vollard, "We learned everything we do from Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the Antilles where he taught himself to paint without a teacher. So he told me. As early as '65 he had eliminated black and bitumen, sienna and the ochers; it's a fact. He told me to never paint with anything other than the three primary colors and their immediate derivatives. It's he who was really the first Impressionist" (quoted in P.M. Doran, (ed.), Conversations with Cezanne, Berkeley, 2001, p. 122). Pissarro's eagerness to experiment with subject and style, epitomized by the contrast between his rural and urban work, is suggestive of an artist who possesses immense talent, range, and an innovative spirit.

Le Pont-Royal, temps gris lumineux was retained by Pissarro's family for at least two decades following his death, first owned by Julie Pissarro, the widow of the artist, and later gifted to their daughter, Jeanne Pissarro-Bonin. The painting has subsequently been held by several distinguished private collections, including that of Harry Stevenson Southam, publisher of The Ottawa Citizen newspaper, chancellor of Carleton College, and chairman of the National Gallery of Canada; and Daniel and Estelle Maggin. Mr. Maggin was the chairman of Diebold Inc., a philanthropist, and renowned collector of rare books and French Impressionism. The painting has been cherished in its current private collection for over forty years. Similar examples are found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Museum Cardiff in Wales, and the Honolulu Museum of Art.