Steamboats in the Port of Rouen
Smoke and steamers on the working quays of Rouen, the great port on the lower Seine — one of a series painted from a hotel window.
Rouen
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
Steamboats in the Port of Rouen — at a glance
- Artist
- Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)
- Year
- 1896–1898
- Movement
- Impressionism
- Place
- The port of Rouen, on the lower Seine, Normandy
- Viewpoint
- A hotel window on the quays — Rouen's old town survives; the port infrastructure has been rebuilt and modernised
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 55 × 65 cm
- Now at
- Musée d'Orsay and other collections
Overview
In 1896 and again in 1898 Camille Pissarro spent long spells in Rouen, working from windows of hotels on the Seine quays and painting the busy commercial port: steamboats and sailing barges at the wharves, cranes and warehouses, smoke and haze over the river, the bridges, and the spires of the city behind. They are oil on canvas, about 55 by 65 cm; examples are in the Musée d'Orsay and other collections.
Where was Steamboats in the Port of Rouen painted?
Scholarship Rouen, the historic capital of Normandy, stands on the lower Seine about 130 km downstream of Paris and was, and remains, a major seaport handling ocean traffic. Pissarro painted the working quays and bridges in the centre of the city. Rouen's medieval old town and cathedral survive (and were partly restored after 1944 war damage), but the port infrastructure — quays, cranes, bridges — has been repeatedly rebuilt and modernised, so the pictures record the industrial waterfront of the 1890s rather than a matchable view.
What is in the painting?
The Seine runs across the picture, crowded with moored and moving steamers and barges, funnels trailing brown and grey smoke. Cranes, sheds and warehouses line the near quay with figures and carts; a bridge crosses; the roofs and church towers of Rouen show dimly through the smoke and river haze. The palette is greys, browns and smoky blues, worked in small strokes.
Look closely
The steamers and smoke
Funnels trail brown and grey smoke over the crowded river.
The quayside cranes
Cranes, sheds and warehouses line the near quay with figures and carts.
The blurred city
The roofs and church towers of Rouen show dimly through the smoke and river haze.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A high oblique view along the crowded river, the smoke and haze softening the far city.
Scholarship From the raised hotel window Pissarro takes in a long stretch of quay and river at an angle, filling it with the dense incident of a working port and letting smoke and mist blur the distance. Like his Paris boulevard series, these are studies of one place under changing light and traffic.
History & provenance
The Rouen port pictures are in the Musée d'Orsay and many other museums and private collections.
Sources
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris — collection entries for Camille Pissarro's Rouen port pictures (1896–98)
- Richard Brettell and Joachim Pissarro, ‘The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings’ (1992)
Related paintings
Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras
1897
Pissarro's Paris boulevard series, from the same years and the same working method.
Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather
1896
Pissarro on a Rouen bridge over the same river, 1896.
Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare
1877
Monet's steam and smoke inside the Paris terminus, 1877.
More by Camille Pissarro
Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather
Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras
