Camille Pissarro
Pissarro took a large room at the Grand Hotel de Russie in February 1897 and stayed until April, painting fourteen views of the Boulevard Montmartre and two of the Boulevard des Italiens from almost the same position.
Grand Hôtel de Russie, 1 rue Drouot
Demolished
Outside only
Nothing survives
The vanished hotel on the corner of the rue Drouot and the Grands Boulevards where Camille Pissarro took a large room in February 1897 and painted sixteen canvases of the boulevards below without moving.
- 1 rue Drouot, 75009 Paris
- Pissarro took a room here from February to April 1897
The place, briefly
On 8 February 1897 Camille Pissarro wrote that he had taken a large room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie, 1 rue Drouot, looking out over the boulevards. He stayed until April.
What he produced there is the clearest demonstration of his late method anywhere: fourteen paintings of the Boulevard Montmartre and two of the Boulevard des Italiens, all from close to the same elevated position. Morning, afternoon, night, sun, rain, a February crowd and a spring one. The most famous of them, the boulevard at night with the gas lamps smeared into the wet road, is in the National Gallery in London.
It is worth being plain about what this was. Pissarro was sixty-six, his eyes were troubling him, and he could not stand in the street for hours as he had in Pontoise. Renting a window was an accommodation to age and illness, and it produced the most modern pictures he ever made — a fixed camera position, a moving city, and time as the actual subject.
The hotel itself has gone. Accounts report it was lost when the boulevard Haussmann was pushed through in the 1920s, and that evidence is secondary rather than archival, so this record marks the corner rather than claiming a building.
Key facts
- February to April 1897
- He described taking the room on 8 February 1897
- Fourteen Boulevard Montmartre canvases and two of the Boulevard des Italiens
- The boulevard at night, in the National Gallery, London
- Gone — reportedly demolished during the 1920s boulevard Haussmann extension
- The corner is public; nothing of the hotel survives
Timeline
Pissarro takes a large room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie in February and paints the boulevards until April.
The hotel is reportedly lost to the extension of the boulevard Haussmann.
On the map
Questions before you go
Where did Pissarro paint the Boulevard Montmartre series?
From a large room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie, 1 rue Drouot, between February and April 1897 — fourteen views of the Boulevard Montmartre and two of the Boulevard des Italiens.
Can you visit the hotel?
No. It no longer exists; secondary accounts report demolition during the 1920s extension of the boulevard Haussmann. The corner and the boulevard view remain.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Boussod, Valadon & Cie, 19 boulevard Montmartre
The Boussod, Valadon gallery on the boulevard Montmartre, where Berthe Morisot was given her first solo exhibition in 1892 — at the age of fifty-one, and three years before her death.
Visit the placeSalle Le Peletier
The theatre that housed the Paris Opera until it burned down in 1873. Its stage, rehearsal rooms and subscribers' foyer are the world behind Degas's dancers — and he went on painting it from memory long after it was ash.
Visit the placeHôtel Drouot
The Paris auction house where Gustave Caillebotte bid on his friends' unsellable pictures to keep prices up and money flowing — and where Paul Gauguin sold thirty of his own paintings to pay for Tahiti.
Visit the placeGalerie Durand-Ruel, 11 rue Le Peletier
Paul Durand-Ruel's gallery, where the second Impressionist exhibition was held in 1876 — the dealer who kept buying the group's work through the years when almost nobody else would.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.