Monet’s wintry painting of a Paris Boulevard during a rainstorm has a calming effect on the audience, even though blues, greens, and grays are often almost depressing. The brush strokes give movement to the scene of a busy boulevard in the 19th century when horse-drawn carriages were the only mode of transportation. Despite the inclement weather, no umbrellas are visible. The mood is reinforced by the strong brush strokes used on the sky and the artist’s intentional blurring at the edges and the trees.
The painting is an oil on canvas, done against a bright pastel blue, green, and yellow background foundation, often called underpainting. It gives the work a glow as if the sunlight were penetrating the gloomy overcast. This glow from the underpainting breaks through in many places, almost like a backlight on the miniature scene. The combination gives the painting a look of stained glass without the bright colors. In addition, stained glass normally uses very simple shapes, while this painting blurs all the shapes so that none are quite distinct. The predominant colors in the painting are blue, green, brown, gray, and black. The hatching in the painting blurs the sky, the trees, and edges, giving the impression of rain on the “figurative” lens through which we see this street. The whole gives almost an impression of the view through a clear bottomed kaleidoscope filled with fuzzy rocks and branches, or perhaps viewed through a lens blurred with something like fog or petroleum jelly.
The perspective in the painting is interesting, considering the viewpoint. We are looking down on a Paris boulevard where people are walking on a very wide promenade and horse-drawn carriages pass or are lined up parked along the edge of the boulevard. Little dabs of color give the impression of flowers or bright balloons. The moody sky appears to show either an approaching storm or one just passed. The canvas is partitioned into approximate thirds, with a triangle of the sky in the upper right corner and the land rising from left to right. The promenade appears to be a hill, though we are pretty certain it is not.
The greenish buildings almost give the illusion of aged copper, with more ghosted into the distance. We get the impression that this is a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, as people gather in small groups or walk in pairs. We are being shown a tradition that continues even on days of inclement weather. It is a slice of the life of this city and a cameo into a distant past when life went at a slower pace.
The time of year is either at the end of the fall season or early in the spring because the trees barely have any leaves. There is an impression of a small whirlwind done with the brush in the upper branches of the first trees. It makes one think of March, but the drabness hint of October. Monet laid the paint in delicately on top of the underpainting and the viewpoint and perspective give the viewer almost a god-like feeling as if we are peering down on this street scene.
This seems to be the heart of Paris and yet, the city seems to go on forever as the artist simply faded the scene into the distance. Some heavy brush strokes darken the sky at the upper left and imply that the weather is changing. The feathered edges of the painting imply that this is a small cameo of an immense cityscape. The artist surely did not know how long his paintings would endure, but the technique makes it seem as if we are using some special spyglass to look at the past.
There is no vanishing point in this painting since it is covered up by the foreground. The angle of view makes the vanishing point impossible to see. However, the painting shows buildings that are merely bluish hints of building shapes that fade into the golden-green underpainting. The texture of the painting created by the broad and hatched brush strokes give it a feel of three dimensions, even though minimal use of bold colors flattens the scene as if it were simply a primitive painting.
The painting was initially not well received since the critics were used to more precision. “In the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, where either this painting or another similar version was exhibited, such marks were described by a critic accustomed to precise outlines and controlled brushwork as “black tongue-lickings.” (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 2008) The critics and the public saw it as crude “dabbings” and the overall color seems drab. However, looking more closely at parts of the painting, there was considerable work involved in making this painting, and the artist used a full palette, but used minimal dabs of the brighter colors, adding to the rather serious mood of the painting.
Of Monet’s paintings, this one is not my favorite, but I certainly would not turn it to the wall. It is not as uplifting as some of his other works, but one would not tire of looking at it all the same.
References
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008, Claude Monet, Boulevard des Cappucines.