Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras
The Boulevard Montmartre in Paris packed with a Carnival crowd, seen from a hotel window — one of a series through the seasons.
boulevard Montmartre
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras — at a glance
- Artist
- Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)
- Year
- 1897
- Movement
- Impressionism
- Place
- Boulevard Montmartre, Paris 9e
- Viewpoint
- An upper corner window of the (demolished) Grand Hôtel de Russie — the boulevard survives
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 65 × 82 cm
- Now at
- Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Overview
In the winter and spring of 1897 the ageing Camille Pissarro took a room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie, on the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Drouot, and painted the Boulevard Montmartre from its window about fourteen times — in sun, rain, fog, morning, night, and, here, on Mardi Gras with the Carnival procession filling the street. It is oil on canvas, about 65 by 82 cm, and it hangs in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Where was Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras painted?
Scholarship The Boulevard Montmartre is a short, busy stretch of the grands boulevards in the ninth arrondissement of Paris, between the Rue Montmartre and the Rue Drouot. Pissarro looked down it from an upper corner window. The line of the boulevard, its width, its rows of trees and many of its buildings survive, so the view can be broadly matched from street level; the Grand Hôtel de Russie itself is gone.
What is in the painting?
The boulevard runs back on a strong diagonal from the lower right. Its whole width is jammed with a Carnival crowd — a dark, dense mass of tiny figures — with decorated floats and a break in the throng where the procession moves. Bare plane trees line both sides; the tall pale Haussmann façades with their shops and awnings recede into a hazy distance under a soft grey sky.
Look closely
The Carnival crowd
The whole width of the boulevard is a dense dark mass of tiny figures, with floats in the procession.
The receding façades
Pale Haussmann buildings with shops and awnings converge into a hazy distance.
The bare plane trees
Leafless winter trees line both sides of the street.
The steep angle
The high window lets Pissarro look straight down the boulevard's whole length at once.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A high, oblique view straight down the boulevard, the receding building lines and tree rows funnelling the eye into the crowd.
Scholarship The raised window position lets Pissarro take in the whole street at a steep angle; the converging façades and trees drive the perspective, and the crowd is built from countless small dabs. Painting the same view repeatedly through changing light and events is Pissarro's late-life equivalent of Monet's series.
History & provenance
The painting was in the Shchukin collection in Moscow and, after the Revolution, entered the state museums; it is in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.
Sources
- State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg — collection entry for Camille Pissarro, ‘Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras’ (1897)
- Richard Brettell and Joachim Pissarro, ‘The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings’ (1992)
Related paintings
More by Camille Pissarro
Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather
Steamboats in the Port of Rouen
