Pissarro’s hidden support for the Dreyfusards appears in Place Du Theatre Francais: Rain Effect (1898) as the perspective shifts even more to the right. Pissarro embodies the motion that he portrays in his series by moving the moves the perspective from the Rue Saint-Honore to the Avenue to the Place du Theatre Francais. One possible explanation to his moving series to the right could be his move away from the anarchist extreme left towards a bit centrist left. In January 18, 1898, thirty-three socialists issued a manifesto declaring neutrality in the Dreyfus Affair, a scandal they deemed a “convulsive struggle of two rival bourgeois factions [where] everything is hypocrisy, everything is fraudulent. The clericals lie when they describe their shameful appetite for positions and rewards. The Opportunists lie when to save themselves they invoke the human rights they themselves previously violated” (qtd. Derfler 131). Pissarro’s Dreyfusard sentiments strayed away from the more extreme leftist principles into the more mainstream, central left which took sides during the affair. As a result, Pissarro personifies the political participation of the French public in the Avenue de l’Opera series through movement on and off the canvas.
The reoccurring theme of motion appears in Place du Theatre Paris Francais (1898), where the burst of human activity threatens the stability of painting. Here Pissarro takes the freedom to pursue individual paths to the extreme as he delves into the road itself. Parisians walk in all different directions; the disorder in all the motion gives the impression of barely contained chaos, as carriages and pedestrians are interspersed throughout the painting. In Camille Pissarro, Christopher Lloyd praises Pissarro’s technique: “Pissarro deploys diagonals, horizontals and verticals with such precision that the complicated tangle of movement and life presented by an urban or industrial scene is deftly pinned to the canvas. Pissarro’s supreme ability as an artist was to bring order to confusion” (Lloyd 133). The confusion in Pissarro’s painting parallels the confusion of French society at the time. Nord alludes to this chaos when he states, “It was the bourgeoisie who held a balance, terrified of social revolution but at the same time suspicious of clerical and military machinations” (Nord 102). Pissarro’s commotion on the canvas mirrored the uproar in the French populace. Confronted with such stark choices, the Dreyfus Affair debate tore France apart as people questioned what the Republic really stood for. Amidst the political confusion of his time, Pissarro was able to formulate a hidden message about the chaos in France in his series paintings.
Pictured:
Camille Pissarro, Place Du Theatre Francais: Rain Effect (1898)
Camille Pissarro, Place du Theatre Francais (1898)