Statue of Henri-IV, Early Spring (First Series)

Statue of Henri IV, Early Spring of 1901 at Museo Soumaya in Mexico City belongs to Pissarro's Pont Neuf series, in which he painted the equestrian statue of the Bourbon king who had completed the bridge in 1607 as a recurring element in his views of the Île de la Cité. The Henri IV statue — installed in 1818 as a Restoration replacement for the Revolutionary-era original — provided a historical anchor within the modern urban panorama: a monument to the pre-Revolutionary monarchy standing at the centre of a nineteenth-century commercial city that had definitively superseded the world the statue represented. For Pissarro, whose anarchist politics made him hostile to monarchy and authority in all forms, the statue's presence in his compositional frame was purely a visual rather than a political choice — he was interested in the Seine's panorama and the statue happened to be part of it. Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, one of Latin America's most architecturally distinctive museums, holds this work as part of its European collection that spans the full range of Western art from medieval through modern periods.

The equestrian statue creates a dark silhouetted form against the lighter sky and river, providing a compositional anchor for the broader river panorama. Pissarro renders the early spring light with delicate, high-keyed tones—the pale greens of budding trees, cool blue sky, and bright Seine reflections.