The Impressionist & the City; Pissarro's Series Paintings

A study of Camille Pissarro's later urban painting

Author

Richard R Brettell, and Joachim Pissarro, edited by Mary Anne Stevens

Publisher

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1993

The Impressionist & the City; Pissarro's Series Paintings

Printing Details

First edition. Hardback in dustwrapper. 29 × 25.5cm, 229pp.

Camille Pissarro is perhaps best known for the landscape paintings of his early career, yet in the final decade of his life (1893–1903) he began to depict urban scenes and his paintings from this period, of Paris, Rouen and the busy ports of Dieppe and Le Havre formed an important component of his artistic output. At this time Pissarro, like Monet, started to work on canvases in series, often pointing several simultaneously and discarding one temporarily when the light, the weather or his mood altered. He started all of them at the scene and worked with extraordinary speed and deftness. In this book, the authors set Pissarro's cityscapes in their broad art-historical context, looking also at contemporary treatments of the urban scene by Vuillard, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec. Using Pissarro's extensive correspondence from this period, they reveal the artist's own attitude towards his final works. The book includes a catalogue of Pissarro's urban series, each one introduced by an overview covering the history of the cityscape pictured and the production, exhibition history and early critical reception of the series.

Condition

Very good condition, with some light bumping to the wrapper, and a few small spots to the pages' top edge. The book remains in strong readable condition.