This gorgeous depiction of Paris set in 1897 was painted by the French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. He combined an incredible blue-black sky, beautifully lined buildings vanishing into a point far off, and a road lit by street lights to create this Impressionist masterpiece. It is titled “The Boulevard Montmartre at Night”.
This painting is not simply a Parisian street. What it really is, is an impression of the street and all the elements in it. It is a depiction of the bright new face of a Paris. After the famous renovation of Paris by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who restructured the entire city and created the magnificent wide boulevards we know and love today, artists developed a penchant for showing the city in its glorious new avatar! Camille Pissarro contributed greatly to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and was light-heartedly referred to as the “dean of the Impressionist painters.”