Le boulevard des Capucines

From a balcony high above Paris, Monet looked down on a boulevard full of carriages and passers-by and turned them into quick dark flecks. A critic mocked those little black marks; they became part of the birth of Impressionism.

The story behind the painting

Monet painted this view in 1873 from the balcony of the photographer Nadar's studio at 35 boulevard des Capucines, on the corner of rue Daunou, the same rooms that a few months later would host what became known as the first Impressionist exhibition. Manet later said Nadar was as good as good bread. That same year Monet painted two views of the boulevard. One, number 292 in Daniel Wildenstein's catalogue, was shown at the first Impressionist exhibition; the other, number 293, is now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. This version, about 60 by 80 cm, is in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

What to look for

Monet had the luck of looking down on the life of the boulevard from above. The people below are not drawn one by one: he renders them as thin graphic notes, small dark touches that read as a crowd moving along the pavement. Look at how the whole street seems to shimmer with motion, carriages and walkers blending into one flow. The critic Ernest Chesneau, though he confused Manet and Monet, praised exactly this: the prodigious animation of the public street and the swarming of the crowd on the asphalt. Seen up close the marks dissolve; step back and the boulevard comes alive.

Meaning and intent

Louis Leroy of Le Charivari mocked the painting in a fictional dialogue after the 1874 exhibition, asking what all the little black marks at the bottom meant, and being told they were people walking. He called them flecks made like imitation marble and claimed they could give one a stroke. Yet Monet had defenders too. Ernest d'Hervilly in Le Rappel urged support for this bold venture, and Léon de Lora in Le Gaulois praised a brilliant sketch of the Boulevard des Capucines. Marianne Alphant notes that Monet disliked crowds and street painting, which may explain why he chose to paint the city from above.

Legacy

Monet kept returning to balconies. In 1876 he painted the Tuileries gardens from the fifth floor of 198 rue de Rivoli, at the home of Victor Chocquet, and in 1878 he painted La Rue Montorgueil and La Rue Mosnier with Flags from balconies lent by strangers he had asked for permission. This canvas was bought from Monet in 1874, through Manet, by the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, and was shown at Durand-Ruel in 1883 and at Georges Petit in 1889. In 1907 the Russian collector Ivan Morozov, a lover of the Impressionists, acquired it. His collection was nationalised in 1918, and the painting is today in the Pushkin Museum.