Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paris

Paintings by Caillebotte, Monet, Van Gogh and Seurat

Sep 14, 2009

Views of the French capital by Impressionists Caillebotte and Monet and Post-Impressionists Van Gogh and Seurat.

Paris has always been a gathering place for artists and has inspired many a painting with its unique light and architecture, along with the distinctive character of its people. Naturally, Frenchmen Gustave Caillebotte, Claude Monet and Georges Seurat were inclined to capture scenes of the city where they spent much of their lives, but visiting artist Vincent van Gogh declared as well that Paris was an adventure, and that "the French air clears up the brain and does good — a world of good."

Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street: Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte’s celebrated Paris Street: Rainy Day was completed in 1877. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the Parisian government had initiated a plan to expand the city’s narrow, cramped streets into a network of wide boulevards. Caillebotte’s painterly eye was drawn to the intersection of the new Rue de Turin and the Rue de Moscou, in a neighborhood where Caillebotte owned property and had set up his artist’s studio.

Paris Street: Rainy Day shows the cityscape in immediate focus, with fine effects of slick pavement and damp umbrellas. Caillebotte’s realistic notes appealed to conservative art lovers of the day, while his large canvas and unusual perspective intrigued more modernist fans.

Claude Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare

The Saint-Lazare Station or Gare Saint-Lazare has long been one of Paris’ busiest railroad terminals. French Impressionist Claude Monet had a studio near the station in 1877, and the location inspired him to paint eleven scenes of this hub of train and passenger activity. A few years earlier, the station had also inspired Edouard Manet to paint an 1874 work called The Railway. Like his friend and colleague Monet, Manet had a studio in the neighborhood and was intrigued by the Gare Saint-Lazare, although The Railway's cropped perspective focuses more on two travelers than the station itself.

Monet actually worked within the station to produce some of his versions of the structure. This serial technique was new to Monet at the time, but would of course become a future theme for him in his famed paintings of haystacks and views of bridges and cathedrals. Monet created especially impressive effects in his Saint-Lazare series, with blue-gray light streaming through the station’s windowed ceiling and plumes of white steam billowing from the train engines.

Vincent van Gogh’s Montmartre

Spring of 1886 brought Vincent van Gogh to Paris’ Montmartre neighborhood, where he shared an apartment with his brother Theo. Vincent had moved to Paris from Antwerp, and while in his new milieu he began to be influenced by Japanese and Pointillist techniques. He also interacted with several fellow artists, including Emile Bernard, Paul Signac, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin.

The Montmartre section of Paris has long been known for its Bohemian atmosphere and for such celebrated artistic inhabitants as Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani — to name a few. Montmartre is also home to the curious combination of the great Sacré-Cœur Basilica and the bright and bawdy Moulin Rouge nightclub. Van Gogh painted a number of Montmartre scenes while he lived in Paris, with his 1887 Vegetable Garden of Montmartre showing the more rustic side of the neighborhood and how it was then still a refuge from central Paris’ increasing urbanization.

Georges Seurat’s Eiffel Tower

Van Gogh reportedly met the Pointillist artist Georges Seurat just before van Gogh left Paris; Van Gogh was impressed by Seurat’s "stippling" style but expressed concern in a letter to Theo that the technique might become too common and therefore lose its significance. In terms of Seurat’s precise points of color applied to his native Paris, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte is a wonderful and well-known park scene and generally considered to be Seurat’s masterpiece.

Seurat’s painting of Paris’ Eiffel Tower is also a fine example of his work. The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889 and received with both enthusiasm and contempt by Parisians. It was then the tallest structure in the world and regarded as either an engineering marvel or an eighty-plus stories vertical horror. Seurat evidently did not consider the tower to be an eyesore and instead painted it in a muted, controlled manner, rising high above the city in a lovely variegated haze.

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The copyright of the article Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paris in 19th Century Art is owned by Meg Nola. Permission to republish Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paris in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.