Camille Pissarro, The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning, 1897

The Impressionist style and soothing color palette used by Pissarro initially drew me to this piece. After considering the painting further, I realized that the work combines some of the most comforting memories of the past years of my life, somehow bringing me back to my own time in Paris on this boulevard. I place myself in this winter scene a few years ago, walking down the only lively street of Hanover, New Hampshire in the snow, getting a feel of college communities for the first time and realizing that I should not fear the future, but look forward to new and different phases of life. Staring at this work for a prolonged period of time, I act as though I am analyzing every line (and getting it, too), when really I simply watch the movement, how the snow seems to actually fall upon the busy Parisians on loop. I think about how Pissarro found a way to capture a moment and keep it alive as long as the canvas holds up. The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning is far more than paint on cloth, because it encompasses so much emotion and memory for whoever has the pleasure of spending some time with it.

Pissarro’s multiple depictions of Paris’s famous Boulevard Montmartre highlight everyday life using numerous human subjects represented in a realistic manner. The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning features the distinctive Impressionist texture, which adds to the work’s niveous atmosphere. Pissarro uses hues of orange and blue to complement one another and contrast the frosted winter environment, ultimately creating an aesthetically pleasing palette. The streetlights dividing the boulevard draw attention to the center of the painting and provide a balanced base. They also provide scale, emphasizing the pedestrians’ diminutive nature. Detailed buildings bring focus to the windows and roofs on the upper half of the canvas and lead the eye from the far right to the street’s vanishing point. Pissarro’s depiction of the boulevard, continuing to the horizon, not only adds depth and space, but it reinforces perspective. By making the street seem to fade away higher on the canvas, he creates an aerial view of the Boulevard Montmartre that allows viewers of the painting to seemingly look down upon the pedestrians, dramatically changing interpretive perception from that of an eye-level point of view.