Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square was painted in 1878 during De Nittis's most productive English period. He first visited London in 1874 — the year of the first Impressionist exhibition — and returned repeatedly, producing urban views that placed him alongside Monet and Pissarro in the Impressionist documentation of the British capital. Trafalgar Square offered one of the most visually spectacular public spaces in London: Nelson's Column, the National Gallery to the north, the fountains, and an incessant flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic creating exactly the modern urban spectacle Impressionist painters sought. De Nittis engaged with London's characteristic grey-silver outdoor light and the remarkable social variety of one of the busiest public spaces in the world's largest city, bringing to it the same plein-air directness he applied to Parisian boulevards.

The composition centres on the dramatic public space, with Nelson's Column providing a strong vertical axis and the fountains and crowd offering ground-level interest. London's grey-silver outdoor light is captured through a cool palette and atmospheric dissolution of distant elements.