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Lot Essay
Following the completion of his Avenue de L'Opra series, Pissarro went back to Rouen for a third time, in order to finish the series he had started there in 1896. On his return to Paris late in 1898, he decided to rent an apartment from which to execute another series. 'Nous avons arrt un appartement rue de Rivoli, 204, en face des Tuileries, avec une vue superbe du jardin, du Louvre gauches, au fond les maisons, des quais derrire les arbres du jardin, droite le dme des Invalides, le clochers de Sainte-Clothilde derrire les massifs de marroniers, c'est trs beau. J'aurai une belle srie faire. (Cela va me coter cher, mais j'espre m'en tirer avec ma srie)' (letter to Lucien Pissarro, 4 Dec. 1898, quoted in J. Bailly-Herzberg, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, vol. IV, 1895-1898, Paris, 1989).
The Tuileries-Louvre series marks the first that Pissarro executed from the stable and quasi permanent base of an apartment instead of from a temporary hotel room. Thus he was able to devote more time to the series, resulting in not only a larger group of pictures, but also a greater range of formats, motifs and effects.
Comprising two groups of pictures, one executed in 1899 and the other in 1900, the Tuileries series explores the non-urban aspect of Paris, a thematic opposition that had hitherto been only superficially addressed in the Boulevard Montmartre series. The gardens become the artist's primary but not exclusive motif, creating a conflict between nature and the city. The linearity of the sculpted gardens and the architectural harmonies of the rectangular and the circular, however, serve to constantly remind that this nature is in fact a construct, both
enclosed and protected by the surrounding structures. 'These structures are themselves counterbalanced by foliage or entangled branches. The
marvellously symmetrical layout of the Gardens was fragmented,
disrupted and pluralised in Pissarro's paintings of them' (R. R.
Bretell and J. Pissarro, exh. cat. The Impressionist and the City,
Pissarro's Series Paintings, New Haven and London, 1992, p. 104).
The Wildenstein Institute will include this painting in their forthcoming Pissarro catalogue raisonn.
The Tuileries-Louvre series marks the first that Pissarro executed from the stable and quasi permanent base of an apartment instead of from a temporary hotel room. Thus he was able to devote more time to the series, resulting in not only a larger group of pictures, but also a greater range of formats, motifs and effects.
Comprising two groups of pictures, one executed in 1899 and the other in 1900, the Tuileries series explores the non-urban aspect of Paris, a thematic opposition that had hitherto been only superficially addressed in the Boulevard Montmartre series. The gardens become the artist's primary but not exclusive motif, creating a conflict between nature and the city. The linearity of the sculpted gardens and the architectural harmonies of the rectangular and the circular, however, serve to constantly remind that this nature is in fact a construct, both
enclosed and protected by the surrounding structures. 'These structures are themselves counterbalanced by foliage or entangled branches. The
marvellously symmetrical layout of the Gardens was fragmented,
disrupted and pluralised in Pissarro's paintings of them' (R. R.
Bretell and J. Pissarro, exh. cat. The Impressionist and the City,
Pissarro's Series Paintings, New Haven and London, 1992, p. 104).
The Wildenstein Institute will include this painting in their forthcoming Pissarro catalogue raisonn.