Pissarro's Boulevard Montmartre series is a group of fourteen paintings of the same Paris street, all painted between February and April 1897 from a single hotel window. He was too frail to work outdoors, so he rented a room and painted the boulevard below in every light and weather he could catch.
A room booked for its view
Pissarro took a room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie, at the corner of Boulevard Montmartre and Boulevard des Italiens. From the window he could look east down Montmartre and west down Haussmann.
He painted fourteen views of Boulevard Montmartre that spring, along with two more of the neighboring Boulevard des Italiens. Each canvas is the same corner, the same rooftops, the same curve of the street.
Weather as the real subject
What changes from painting to painting is not the street but the hour and the sky. Rain, sun, fog, crowds thinning and thickening, carriages catching the light differently at ten in the morning than at four.
One version shows the boulevard during Mardi Gras, the street packed with carnival crowds under his window. It hangs today at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Fourteen paintings, scattered across the world
The series did not stay together. Individual canvases from 1897 are now held by the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, among others.
Seeing more than one requires travel to several countries. No museum owns the full set.
Why he stopped painting outdoors
A chronic eye infection made working outside increasingly hard for Pissarro in the 1890s. Hotel windows solved the problem: a fixed, comfortable vantage point he could return to for weeks at a time.
He used the same method on other Paris streets in the years that followed, but the Boulevard Montmartre series of 1897 was the first and the largest group.
Questions about the Boulevard Montmartre series
How many paintings are in the series? Fourteen views of Boulevard Montmartre, painted between February and April 1897, plus two of the nearby Boulevard des Italiens.
Where did Pissarro paint them from? A rented room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie, overlooking the boulevard.
Where are the paintings now? Spread across museums worldwide, including the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.
Why paint the same street fourteen times? Pissarro was chasing changes in weather and light, not the street itself, and a chronic eye condition made painting outdoors difficult by the 1890s.
The fourteen canvases were painted only weeks apart but now live on four different continents, in London, New York, Melbourne and Saint Petersburg.
Read Camille Pissarro: The Complete Story for the rest of his life and work.