OIL PAINTING: Italian Boulevard, 1897
The everyday and the truths beneath the appearance of realism, that paradoxical goal makes Pissaro an important shaper of modern art. No wonder Pissaro felt Impressionism as a revelation: it had happily discarded incidental detail.
No wonder, too, that Pissaro paintings can look dry, even disappointing, beside his more famous colleagues. Pissaro almost never allows himself sharp foreground colors, and so he misses
Monet's art, that amazing construction of deep space. Pissaro prefers browns and other even tones, as in this ''Italian Boulevard''. He must have felt
Renoir's feathery brushwork and tender embrace of appearances as an offense against nature.