Le Louvre, soleil couchant, 3e série

Le Louvre, soleil couchant, 3e série (The Louvre, Setting Sun, Third Series) at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, painted in 1902, belongs to the third of Pissarro's sustained campaigns of Louvre views — a subject he approached with the same serial rigour he brought to his boulevard and Seine studies. The Minnesota Marine Art Museum, which specializes in paintings of water and maritime subjects but holds broader European Impressionist works in its collection, holds this sunset Louvre as part of its European holdings. The setting sun specified in the title — 'soleil couchant' — was one of the most atmospheric and chromatic of the conditions he recorded in the Louvre series, the warm orange-gold of the evening sun on the stone facades giving the most formal architecture in France a momentary quality of natural beauty that contrasted with its permanent institutional weight. His designation of this as the third series confirms the systematic character of his Louvre investigation: not a single painting but a sustained campaign across different series, each exploring different seasonal and atmospheric conditions.

Setting sunlight is rendered through warm orange, amber, and rose across the Louvre facades. Shadows are cool violet, creating strong complementary contrast. Pissarro's Divisionist strokes are more open and varied here than in his grey-day canvases, energized by the dramatic chromatic range.