[Art Theory] Camille Pissarro and Statue of Henri IV, Morning, Winter Sunlight, 1900
Camile Pissarro (1830–1903) was one of the principal figures in the founding and development of Impressionism in the 19th century. The only one who participated in all eight impressionist exhibitions, he is remembered as “Papa Pissarro” by many of his students including Gauguin and Cézanne due to the kindness and genuineness of his character. Although he is mainly remembered as an impressionist master for pastoral and plein air landscape paintings, the objective of this paper is, through a biographical approach to one Pissarro Paris painting, to unveil his stylistic change, his health condition and his social identity.
To employ a biographical, or a historical-biographical criticism to in the analysis of art is to use a critical method that aims to understand the author’s life and times through an art work. This approach could be considered one of the oldest method in the study of art history, dating back to the Italian painter Giorgio Vasari’s writing Lives of the Artists in 1550 in the period of high Renaissance. As stated in the preface of Lives of the Artists, Vasari intended to preserve the names of artists and to link them with their works. Through a more personal and historical account, Vasari, a painter himself, featured biographies of Italian artists including some of the most well-known Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. By unveiling the presence of the artist in his/her artworks, the biographical approach considers that the meaning of an artwork, both of its conception and execution, is determined by the artist, with less attention into the social and historical factors. An insight in the life events, as well as the concerns, conflicts, perceptions, and emotions of the artist at the moment of execution of the artwork thus is absolutely necessary to apply the biographical method. Therefore, this approach to art relies heavily on texts concerning the artist’s life, such as autobiographies, Catalogue Raisonnes, biographies, memoirs and notebooks, sketches and journals, letters, or even the artist’s signature.
Statue of Henri IV, Morning, Winter Sunlight, 1900 (Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 3/4 inches, 1951–1–2) is an oil painting by Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) in his last years. It can be viewed as a stylistically typical Impressionist painting while depicting a less common subject. The Statue of Henri IV is situated in the center of the canvas in a warm setting. Surrounded by the river Seine, on the square there are sporadic strolling pedestrians around the Statue. Unlike other paintings of French cities, it does not have any typical tree-lined boulevards; however, the painting includes some of the most famous attractions of Paris: the two aisles of the Pont Neuf, the equestrian Status of Henri IV set on the Place du Vert-Galant, the tip of the Ile de la Cite, and the Palais de Louvre on the right bank of the Seine. The painterly brushstrokes are clearly evident in the painting, one overlapping with another, adding a rich texture to this work of art. Overall, Pissarro incorporated a palette of mostly warm, light colors into the painting with pinks and browns; but also, he included splashes of cool colors noticeable in the sky and the river Seine.
Pissarro’s commitment to perceptual experience is evident in his efforts to capture the fleeting visual effects of the season, weather, and time of day. As a great influential artist to numerous younger painters, Camille Pissarro, along with Monet were the leading painters who tried to capture a truer visual image through an intense study of nature and quickly finished the artwork in an outdoor setting. However, with a close examination of the brushstroke, one can observe a varying handling of paint — from agitated, heavily reworked lower part to areas of broad wet-into-wet strokes in the sky. Pissarro, here dabbing on paint in order to capture the color of light on the ground, showed some traces of pointillism, a technique developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Pissarro’s biography also in lined with the timeline of Pissarro’s study with these Neo-Impressionists since 1885. Thus, this painting could be seen as a mixed of impressionism and pointillism and as one of many living evidences of how Pissarro changed his style and working methods in response to his latest artistic encounters and working relationships.
Other than revealing his frequent stylistic changes throughout his artistic career, this painting also indicates aspects of his health condition at the time of creation. The location of the landscape suggests that this painting is completed in the east of the Statue of Henri IV in the Vert Galant, a park at the on the Île de la Cité’s westernmost tip. The viewpoint of the is slightly higher, suggesting that Pissarro was painting indoor, most possibly in a building near the Vert Galant. In the last decade of his life, one would observed that most of Pissarro’s work are indoors rather than outdoors. Rather than representing Pissaro’s new curiosity about urban life, this change is in part due to the falling eyesight of the painter. Pissarro, already a 70 years old man, suffered from a recurring eye infection that prevented him from working outdoors except in warm weather. Thus, although the impressionist is primarily remembered for depictions of rural life, during the last decade of his life he produced over three hundred paintings of French cities whiling painting indoors. In Paris he made several series of paintings by sitting beside the windows in different rooms he rented in hotels or apartment buildings. In fact, Pissarro found an apartment (28 Place Dauphone) nearer to the Seine in March 1900, and began an extensive series of views with unique depictions of variations in light, weather effects, and the change of seasons, including this one. At that period of his life, due to the success of a sole exhibition in 1892 in the Galerie Durand-Ruel, Pissarro was able to live free from worry and in comfortable, bourgeois conditions. Therefore, the production of these paintings was not for financial needs (Becker 2000). And it is hardly surprising that the pictures he painted should have been of the scenes particularly important to him.
The explanation that leads Pissarro to rent the room and depict this particular scene might be a political one. The equestrian statue depicted Henri IV, who famously ended the Wars of religion (1562–98). Viewed as the leading Protestant figure who bravely stood up against the authority of Christianity, Henri IV displayed a religious tolerance unusual for the era; and the reign of Henry IV had a lasting impact on the French people for generations afterward. Being a Jew, anarchist, and an artist, Pissarro is a great admirer for this kind of tolerance that the French society needed. The last decade of 19th century saw the development of a huge debate on the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), which began when the French government wrongfully convicted the Jewish Military captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason. Described later by Léon Blum, a three-time Prime Minister of France, the Dreyfus Affair
“was a human crisis, less extended and less prolonged in time but no less violent than the French Revolution.”
(Conner, 2014) And Pissarro, a descendent from a Spanish-Portuguese Jewish family, was discriminated against even on the street as his letter to his son later disclosed. As Émile Zola took his public stand in his famous article J’Accuse, Pissarro quickly responded and he was strongly supportive others who defended Dreyfus. Even his wife Julie complained: “Doubtless the Zola affair takes all your time, so you can’t write to me. That interest you much more than your family.” (Rachum, 2000) However, he was not even in a position to sign his petition supporting Zola, since he was still a Danish citizen and feared possible deportation. Thus, the tendency toward anti-Semitism in the French society was intensely troubling to the foreign Jewish Pissarro. He fell out with his close friend and artistic collaborator Degas, who even refused to attend Pissarro’s funeral. Therefore, by paiting this Statue, Pissarro eagerly wanted to continue the spirit of religious tolerance exhibited by Henri IV three hundred years ago and extended to higher level of tolerance: a racial tolerance. From the very first beginning, Camille Pissarro is known as a social painter and events in his personal life bear out his deeply held affiliations. According to Christopher Lloyd, “his friendships, his letters, his financial contributions, his affiliations, his reading, and his anarchist prints all reveal an interest in contemporary politics.” (Lloyd, 1981) After the Dreyfus Affair, the Jewish identity troubled Pissarro ever more. In a letter to his niece Esther Isaacson in 1889, a year before he painted the Statue of Henri IV, Pissarro suggested that his lack of acceptance as a painter may have been related to his being Jewish. “… a matter of race, probably. Until now, no Jew has made art here, or rather no Jew has search to make a disinterested and truly felt art. I believe that this could be one of the causes of my bad luck…”(Rachum, 2000) Therefore, in the divisive period of anti-Semitism, it is likely that this particular series by Pissarro was, not an expression of mood and impressions, but a statement against the authority and anti-Semitism.
Through a biographical approach, Statue of Henri IV, Morning, Winter Sunlight, 1900 not only unfolds the influence of pointillism on Pissarro in his later years, but also reveals Pissarro’s declining health condition and his identity as a social activist. Raised as a traditional Jew, Pissarro’s politics however tended towards socialism, social justice and atheism. And Pissarro’s Paris painting should be seen as expressions of his political and social views. Although in his later years his life was coming to an end, it is not the end of his epoch, his passion for anti- Semitism and his voice for anarchism.
References
- Becker, C. and Pissarro, C. Camille Pissarro. Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000.
- Conner, Tom. The Dreyfus Affair and the rise of the French public intellectual. Jefferson,
- NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014.
- Lloyd, Christopher Hamilton. Camille Pissarro. New York: Rizolli International Publications, 1981.
- Pissarro, Camille. Correspondence de Camille Pissarro. Paris: Editions du Valhermeil, 1986.
- Rachum, Stephanie. “Camille Pissarro’s Jewish Identity.” Assaph: Studies in Art History, 2000.
