Place du Theatre Francais,Fog Effect 1897

Curator: Looking at this painting by Camille Pissarro, titled "Place du Theatre Francais, Fog Effect," painted in 1897, one is immediately struck by the atmospheric rendering of urban life. Pissarro employs oil paints to capture the essence of a foggy day in Paris. Editor: Immediately I’m sinking into the scene – that kind of day when the city exhales and everything goes quiet and muffled. It's funny, you can almost hear the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels, not loudly, but like a half-remembered dream. The colors almost drain away to just a faint recollection of blues and pinks in the sky. Curator: The choice of colors definitely supports the idea of symbolic veiling, a sense of obscured truth perhaps? Fog often plays this role in art and literature. Pissarro uses light and shadow here, but only barely there... What do you make of the repetition of horse-drawn carriages and groups of figures? Editor: You know, the repetition has a meditative quality. These carriages and figures might appear fleeting, yet, their persistent appearance reminds us of enduring routines in city life, despite any sense of melancholic dream. As if the city itself keeps ticking. I wonder too if there is an echo to those impressionist obsessions of seeing how light transforms the same subject over and over? Curator: Pissarro was very intentional. Considering it as a plein-air piece, that approach reveals a deliberate investigation into representing weather phenomena. The heavy impasto gives us that materiality! Editor: It really does, doesn’t it? Thick daubs building the scene up right in front of you... And seeing those exposed bare trees—that just tugs at a feeling that autumn has yielded the ground, that now is winter… a somber sense. Do you sense melancholy here? Curator: The greys, whites and beiges surely lend themselves to feelings of melancholy, but this artistic choice, is more deeply ingrained. His other pieces echo social changes and shifting dynamics within urban settings through their symbolism of crowded streets or empty buildings... perhaps! It becomes like an anthropological portrait in the Impressionistic guise, or perhaps vice-versa? Editor: You always go deeper! And yes— that is where he lifts it up to more than just seeing it all as fog... and that perhaps even within fog, you feel this march onwards...