Boulevard in Paris

Boulevard in Paris

ca 1888

Distemper on cardboard

Mått 50,50 x 67,00 cm Ram 86,00 x 102,00 x 10,00 cm

F 130

Bequest of Pontus and Göthilda Fürstenberg, 1902

From the book “The Collection: The Gothenburg Museum of Art”, Gothenburg 2014: Boulevard in Paris (c.1888) is an Impressionistic view of vibrant street life on a sunny day. The shadows of the trees lining the boulevard dapple the ground. Lampposts and advertising hoardings are reminders of a modern urbanity. A horseman in a top hat rides towards us, while a small dog eagerly runs ahead. Further into the picture, a fiacre comes towards us from a different angle. People cross the street, while others rest on benches or sit in the open-air cafés. The gated official building that looms in the background is the Ministry of the Interior. The street can thus be identified as the avenue Marigny, which crosses the Champs-Élysées near the Place de la Concorde. The painter shows the prospect looking north-east towards the Place Beauvau. An empty fiacre has in best Impressionist manner been cut off by the left edge, much as Degas liked to do in his pictures. It is a trick that resembles a photograph’s arbitrary framing of reality, and therefore signals modernity, movement, and presence, as if the image was a snapshot. The steep perspective reinforces the sense of motion. It is an impressionistic account of modern urban life, with the wide boulevards that had just been built. The artist has emphasized light and colour—the shadows are done in blues—and yet not in as radical a manner as Claude Monet and other Impressionists. Raffaëlli’s drawing is more apparent, and often shines through the tempera where it has been applied most thinly. Kristoffer Arvidsson

30/05/2020 - 30/08/2020 Köpenhamn, Statens Museum for Kunst, 22/02/2003 - 25/05/2003 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, 25/09/2002 - 19/01/2003 Denver, Denver Art Museum, 02/10/1999 - 12/12/1999, no. 48 Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, 12/06/1999 - 29/08/1999, no. 48 Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 23/02/1999 - 16/05/1999, no. 48

Georg Pauli, "Fürstenbergska galleriet. Spridda drag ur dess historia", Ord & Bild, 1902, p. 349 Gudmund Vigtel, ”Jean François Raffaëlli”, Impressionism. Paintings Collected by European Museums, Atlanta, Seattle, Denver 1999, no. 48, p. 199 Impressionismen och Norden. Franskt avantgarde i det sena 1800-talet och konsten i Norden 1870-1920, utg. av Torsten Gunnarsson och Per Hedström, Stockholm, 2002, no. 115, p. 119, 307, ill. p. 121, 130-131 Axel L. Romdahl, Göteborgs konstmuseum. Tvåhundra bilder med inledande text av Axel L. Romdahl, Medéns bokhandels aktiebolag, Göteborg 1925., ill. p. 279 Kristoffer Arvidsson, Per Dahlström, Björn Fredlund, Anna Hyltze, Philippa Nanfeldt, Isabella Nilsson, Johan Sjöström, Samlingen Göteborgs konstmuseum, red. Kristoffer Arvidsson, Per Dahlström, Anna Hyltze, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Göteborg 2014., p. 186-187, ill. p. 187