The Place du Havre, Paris

The Place du Havre was painted in 1893 from the Hôtel Garnier, where Pissarro rented a room facing the busy square in front of the Gare Saint-Lazare. The Art Institute of Chicago canvas is one of several paintings he made from this vantage point, recording the square in different weather and at different hours. The Gare Saint-Lazare area — the same railway terminus that had fascinated Monet in his famous series of 1877 — attracted Pissarro for different reasons: not the steam and engineering drama of the station interior but the street life of the square outside, with its layers of pedestrians, carriages, and omnibuses navigating the urban grid.

Pissarro builds the composition from an elevated position using his mature variant of Impressionist touch — short, directional strokes that vary in size and color to suggest the different textures of pavement, vehicle, and human figure. The grey overcast light unifies the palette across the entire scene.