The Louvre, Afternoon, Rainy Weather

1900

Camille Pissarro

Painter, French, born St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1830 - 1903

From high up, we look down and out at a river with seven ferries and barges, the waterway lined with buildings on the bank to our right, in this loosely painted, horizontal landscape. Dashes of muted blue, fern green, and tan create the rippling surface of the river, which fills most of the bottom half of the painting. A dark tugboat chugs out of the scene near the bottom center of the composition, and the other vessels create diagonals along the river, angled down toward the bottom right corner. Closer to us in the lower left corner of the painting, a platform edge with a railing juts out to or over the water. At least six people stand on the platform alone or in pairs. They are loosely painted with touches of black, gray, yellow, plum purple, and peach. The platform itself is painted with swipes of sky blue, oatmeal brown, butter yellow, and rose pink. Each person creates a reflection in the surface of the platform, suggesting it is wet, perhaps with rain. The spiky branches of a row of trees along the far side of the platform are sharp against the landscape beyond. The buildings on the far bank are several stories high and lined with windows. Buildings farther in the distance have triangular rooflines or domes, which become slate blue along the hazy horizon. An arched bridge with a flat deck spans the river about halfway back along the river as we see it. In the top half of the picture, fog-gray and cream-white clouds fill the sky with patches of hazy powder blue showing through. The artist signed and dated the painting in sable brown in the lower left corner, “C. Pissarro. 1900.”

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 89

Artwork overview

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased 17 May 1901 from the artist by (Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York), as Le Louvre, matin, pluie;[1] purchased 8 October 1901 by (Julius Oehme, New York);[2] Edward C. [d. 1915] and Mary Griffin [1855-1937] Walker, Willistead Manor, Walkerville, Ontario, and Washington, by 1905;[3] bequest 4 May 1937 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] See Lionello Venturi, Les Archives de l'Impressionisme, 2 vols., Paris and New York, 1939: 2:47.
[2] According to Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings, 3 vols., Milan and Paris, 2005: 3:828, no. 1346.
[3] The painting was lent by Walker in 1905 to the Exhibition of Paintings, Lent from the Private Collection of E. Chandler Walker, Esq., at the Detroit Museum of Art.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1905

  • Exhibition of Paintings, Lent from the Private Collection of E. Chandler Walker, Esq., Detroit Museum of Art, April 1905, no. 46, as After the Rain, The Louvre, Paris.

1915

  • Exhibition of Paintings by French Impressionists, Detroit Museum of Art, November 1915, no. 39, as After the Rain (The Seine).

1950

  • Paintings by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 20 October-19 November 1950, no cat.

1958

  • A Selection of Paintings from the Edward C. Walker and Mary Walker Collection, Willistead Art Gallery, Windsor, Ontario, 8-29 October 1958, no. 14, as The Seine at Paris.

1959

  • Loan Exhibition. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art: A Benefit Exhibition in Honor of the Gallery's Centenary, Wildenstein, New York, 28 January-7 March 1959, unnumbered cat., as The Seine at Paris.

  • French Masterworks: A Loan Collection from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, 1 July-13 August 1959, no. 20.

1960

  • Art of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, University of California, Berkeley, 5 March-3 April 1960.

1980

  • Homage to Camille Pissarro: The Last Years, 1890-1903, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, 18 May-22 June 1980, no. 18, repro., as Le Louvre, temps de pluie, The Seine at Paris.

1981

  • The Subjective Vision of French Impressionism, Tampa Museum of Art, 27 September-29 November 1981, no. 48.

1983

  • La Vie Moderne: Nineteenth Century French Art from the Corcoran Gallery, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences, Georgia; Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tampa Museum; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Akron Art Museum, 1983-1985, no. 34, repro, as The Louvre, Morning, Rainy Weather.

1997

  • Edith Wharton's World: Portraits of People and Places, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, 26 September 1997-25 January 1998, as The Louvre, Morning, Rainy Weather.

2003

  • The Impressionist Tradition in America, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 19 July 2003-18 October 2004, unpublished checklist, as The Louvre, Morning, Rainy Weather.

2004

  • Monet, la senna, le ninfee: Il grande fiume e il nuovo secolo, Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, 23 October 2004-20 March 2005, no. 15, repro.

2005

  • Camille Pissarro, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005-2006, no. 84, repro., as The Louvre, Morning, Rainy Weather.

2011

  • A Passion for Nature: Landscape Painting from 19th Century France, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, 15 October 2011 - 20 February 2012, no catalogue.

Inscriptions

lower left: C. Pissarro. 1900

Wikidata ID

Q22668048

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