Paris in Painting: 12 Views of a City Being Rebuilt
Paris has been painted more than any city on earth, and the paintings are a record of it being demolished. Caillebotte painted the new boulevards while the old streets were still coming down, Monet painted the same station eleven times, and Van Gogh painted the view from his brother’s window.
The city in twelve views
Between 1853 and 1870, most of medieval Paris was demolished. The Impressionists painted the replacement.
One painter got permission to set up an easel inside a working railway station and had the trains held for the smoke.
One rainy street corner is painted from a viewpoint that no longer exists.
The Eiffel Tower was hated by painters and writers, then painted constantly.
And one view of the city was painted from an asylum, from memory.
1 | Paris Street, Rainy Day, Gustave Caillebotte (1877)
A crossroads near the Gare Saint Lazare, wet cobbles, umbrellas, and buildings so new they look like a stage set. Because they were.
Caillebotte used a camera like framing, cutting a figure at the right edge. More on him in Gustave Caillebotte.
2 | The Gare Saint Lazare series, Claude Monet (1877)
Monet talked the station director into letting him paint on the platforms, and had trains held so the smoke would build under the glass roof.
He made twelve canvases of it in a few months. More on him in Claude Monet.
3 | The Floor Scrapers, Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
The other half of the story: the new Haussmann apartments needed finishing, and Caillebotte painted the men on their knees doing it.
The Salon rejected it. More of that in blacksmiths and workers in painting.
4 | Boulevard Montmartre, Camille Pissarro (1897)
Pissarro rented hotel rooms above the boulevards and painted the same view in every weather and season, from a window, because his eyes could no longer take the outdoor air.
He made fourteen canvases of one stretch of street. More on him in Camille Pissarro.
5 | Moulin de la Galette, Pierre Auguste Renoir (1876)
A Sunday dance in Montmartre, dappled light through leaves, painted on the spot with friends posing as the crowd.
Renoir carried the large canvas up the hill every day for months. More on him in Pierre Auguste Renoir.
6 | At the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1892)
The same hill fifteen years later, at night, indoors, under gaslight, with the green face of a dancer at the edge of the frame.
Lautrec was there most nights for years. More on him in Toulouse Lautrec.
7 | View of Paris from Montmartre, Vincent van Gogh (1886)
Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo in the rue Lepic and painted the city from the hill above it, with windmills still standing.
Montmartre was still half village when he arrived. More on him in Vincent van Gogh.
8 | The Eiffel Tower, from insult to icon
Three hundred artists and writers signed a protest against the tower in 1887, calling it a useless monstrosity. Within twenty years painters could not leave it alone.
Robert Delaunay alone painted it around thirty times. More on him in Robert Delaunay.
9 | The Seine, painted from a boat
Monet had a floating studio built so he could paint the river from the middle of it, and Daubigny had done the same twenty years earlier.
The Seine is the reason Paris has more painted water than any inland city.
10 | Notre Dame, painted before and after
Painters recorded the cathedral through revolution, restoration, war and the 2019 fire. Old canvases are now used as documents by the restorers.
A painting made as a view can end up as an architectural record.
11 | Utrillo and the white streets
Maurice Utrillo painted Montmartre streets from postcards, mixing plaster into his paint to get the exact chalk white of the walls.
He painted the neighbourhood he could not walk through sober. More on him in Maurice Utrillo.
12 | The Paris nobody painted
Almost nobody painted the demolition itself. Haussmann destroyed around 20,000 buildings, and the Impressionists mostly painted what replaced them.
Photography recorded the ruins. Painting recorded the boulevards. Between them you get the whole city.
Painting the city, quick questions
Why does Impressionist Paris look so new? Because it was. Haussmann rebuilt the centre between 1853 and 1870, and the painters worked in the finished streets.
Did Monet really have trains held? He persuaded the station director to delay departures so steam would fill the shed while he painted.
Why did Pissarro paint from windows? A chronic eye condition made outdoor work painful, so he rented rooms above the boulevards and painted from indoors.
Was the Eiffel Tower hated? Yes. Three hundred artists and writers signed a protest in 1887, and several later painted it repeatedly.
Which museums hold them? Orsay for most of the Impressionists, the Art Institute of Chicago for Paris Street Rainy Day, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The number that puts it in scale: Haussmann’s works displaced roughly 350,000 people. The painters we love for their sunlit boulevards were standing in the middle of the largest eviction in the city’s history.
More painted Paris sits at the Met and the Rijksmuseum.