The Place du Havre, Paris
Camille Pissarro painted the square outside the Gare Saint-Lazare from his window at the Hôtel Garnier, where he stayed for a few weeks early in 1893. It is one of the first Paris pictures he made from a rented room, four years before the boulevard Montmartre series.
- 1893
- Oil on canvas
About Camille Pissarro
What the painting shows
The viewer is several floors above the street, looking down and across a wide square on a clear day. The corner of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the railway station the square serves, fills the left edge with its arched openings. From there a run of pale apartment blocks curves away to the right, cream and lilac, five storeys of shuttered windows above a continuous line of shopfronts and awnings. Chimneys stand in rows along the roofs against a sky of white and blue.
The street below is busy in the ordinary way. Horse omnibuses in green and yellow are drawn up along the near side, black cabs cut across the open pavement, a kiosk and an advertising column pasted with bills stand in the foreground, and tall lamp posts rise past the viewer's eye level. Perhaps a hundred people are in the picture, most of them a few centimetres tall and painted as a dark coat and a hat.
Nothing casts a hard shadow. Camille Pissarro built the whole surface from short separate touches of paint, so the pavement is a weave of pink, blue, cream and grey, and the crowd holds together as a texture before it resolves into people.
The window at the Hôtel Garnier
The Art Institute of Chicago, which owns the picture, places the view at the artist's window at the Hôtel Garnier, where Pissarro stayed for a few weeks early in 1893. He was sixty-two.
Working from a rented room was becoming his method. A recurring eye complaint made long spells outdoors in wind and dust painful, and from the 1890s he answered it by taking rooms above the streets he wanted to paint. The Philadelphia Museum of Art describes the condition only as a persistent eye infection, and no museum that holds the paintings names it more precisely. The place du Havre came four years before the fourteen views of the boulevard Montmartre that made the method famous, and ten years before the last campaign, painted from the quai Voltaire in the year he died.
One picture, three names
The painting was exhibited twice in its first two years and was called something different each time. Durand-Ruel showed it in March 1893 as number 40, la Place du Havre. In March 1894 it came back as number 8, Cour du Havre. The gallery's own stock books recorded it as Place du Hârve, a misspelling, under New York stock number 1168 and Paris stock number 2707.
The Art Institute registers no French title of its own for it. The forms above are the dealer's.
Sold to Chicago in fifteen months
Durand-Ruel bought the canvas from Pissarro on 17 March 1893, within weeks of its being painted. On 28 June 1894 the gallery sold it to Potter Palmer of Chicago for 1,200 dollars. A painting made in a Paris hotel room in the winter had an American owner before the following summer was out.
It stayed in the family after Palmer's death in 1902 and came to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922, where it is catalogued in the Potter Palmer Collection.
Shown as a series painting
The picture spent most of the twentieth century hanging on its own in Chicago. Two large exhibitions showed it again alongside the rest of the series: the Camille Pissarro retrospective that travelled from the Hayward Gallery in London to the Grand Palais in Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1980 and 1981, and The Impressionists and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings, which opened at the Dallas Museum of Art in November 1992 and went on to Philadelphia and the Royal Academy in London.
The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid borrowed it again for its Pissarro exhibition in 2013.
Timeline
1893
Pissarro takes a room at the Hôtel Garnier for a few weeks early in the year and paints the square below it. The canvas is inscribed lower right, C. Pissarro / 93.
17 March 1893
Sold by the artist to Durand-Ruel, Paris.
March 1893
Shown at Durand-Ruel as number 40, under the title la Place du Havre.
March 1894
Shown at Durand-Ruel again, as number 8, now called Cour du Havre.
28 June 1894
Sold by Durand-Ruel to Potter Palmer of Chicago for 1,200 dollars.
1922
Given to the Art Institute of Chicago by the Palmer family, accession 1922.434, as part of the Potter Palmer Collection.
1980–81
Lent to the retrospective Camille Pissarro 1830–1903 at the Hayward Gallery, the Grand Palais and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as number 73.
1992–93
Shown in The Impressionists and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings at the Dallas Museum of Art, 15 November to 31 January, as number 38, then in Philadelphia and at the Royal Academy in London.
2013
Lent to Pissarro at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, as number 62.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Place du Havre, and what is the building on the left?
The place du Havre is the square in front of the Gare Saint-Lazare in central Paris, and the station is the building at the left edge of the canvas. Camille Pissarro painted the view in 1893 from a window several floors above the square.
Where did Pissarro paint The Place du Havre from?
From his window at the Hôtel Garnier, where he stayed for a few weeks early in 1893. The Art Institute of Chicago gives that vantage on its record for the painting. Neither the hotel's street number nor the room is documented.
Why did Pissarro paint cities from windows?
Because a recurring eye complaint made long spells of work outdoors, in wind and dust, painful. Camille Pissarro's answer was to rent rooms overlooking the streets he wanted and paint from inside them, which also gave him a raised viewpoint and a view he could return to in any weather. The Philadelphia Museum of Art describes the condition as a persistent eye infection and does not name it further.
Where is The Place du Havre, Paris now?
The Art Institute of Chicago, accession number 1922.434, in the Potter Palmer Collection. The Palmer family gave it to the museum in 1922.
How much did The Place du Havre sell for?
Durand-Ruel bought it from Camille Pissarro on 17 March 1893 and sold it to the Chicago collector Potter Palmer on 28 June 1894 for 1,200 dollars. It has not been on the market since; the Palmer family gave it to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922.
Why does the painting have several different titles?
Because its dealer kept changing them. Durand-Ruel showed the canvas as la Place du Havre in March 1893 and as Cour du Havre in March 1894, and the gallery's stock books entered it as Place du Hârve, a misspelling. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibits it as The Place du Havre, Paris and registers no French title of its own.
