Untitled (Montmartre) 1917

This small painting of Montmartre, probably made on location by Pierre Daura, shimmers in a murky palette of browns and blues. Imagine him there, on that Parisian street, squinting in the wan light of dusk. He must have been working fast. You can see it in the loose, blurry strokes of his brush. I can just picture Daura, trying to capture a quickly disappearing scene. You know how it is when you’re painting outside, and the light changes every minute? It's like the whole world is conspiring to mess with you! He’s had to simplify and abstract—the forms of the buildings almost collapse into each other. But then he hits you with these vertical accents like the lamp post on the right. Painters are always talking to each other, even across time. With its muted tones and simplified forms, Daura’s canvas echoes Corot. It also anticipates the abstracting urban landscapes of someone like Diebenkorn. For Daura, as for every painter, the act of seeing is the act of interpretation, of translation.