The theme of motion can also suggest the forces of change that drive Paris forward, making Pissarro's pieces a possible link to modern industrialization in particular. Joachim Pissarro, Camille Pissarro's great-grandson, summarizes his view of Pissarro's work, saying, "The cities in Pissarro's series display themselves as transient spectacles" (Pissarro 267). To Joachim, the transient commotion of Paris gives Pissarro an opportunity to portray the bustling, modern France. Kathleen Adler similarly argues that Pissarro "explored the differences between urban life, all change and movement, and the slower pace and greater continuity of rural life" (Adler 110). While these statements are true about Pissarro's series, they do not link any of Pissarro's paintings to any original, new use of the urban landscape. Adler herself associates Pissarro's paintings to other urban works, remarking that the Paris series show "small, individually insignificant [figures], often little more than the 'tongue-lickings' Louis Leroy saw in Monet's Boulevard des Capucines in 1874. No single figure or group of figures is a center of attraction, instead individuals blur into an apparently random pattern of jostling crowds and traffic" (Adler 109-110). Without the context of the Dreyfus Affair, Adler has reduced Pissarro's Avenue de l'Opera series to just another Monet painting. This simplified interpretation of Pissarro's urban series lacks any specific connection to Pissarro or the Avenue de l'Opera itself.

Pictured: Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines (1873)

The hysteria did not abate during Zola's trial in February 1898, where anti-Dreyfusards thronged outside of the courtroom, shouting death threats to Jews and Dreyfusards alike. According to Michael Burns in France and the Dreyfus Affair, the crowd of thugs and curious onlookers numbered six thousand by the end of the trial. After ten days, Zola was convicted of libel and sentenced to the maximum punishment, a three thousand franc-fine and a year of prison amidst a jeering courtroom and gangs shouting, "Long live the army!" (Burns 104-105) Persuaded to accept exile instead of imprisonment, Zola fled to Britain; he later returned to France the following year in 1899 for Dreyfus's retrial. Zola died from carbon monoxide poisoning under mysterious circumstances in 1902 (Derfler xx, 114).

Zola's accusatory language set off a flurry of debate, ensuring that the public could no longer ignore the Dreyfus Affair. While Zola dared to risk imprisonment through his actions, the Jewish, anarchist Pissarro could not afford to become a target. Here are excerpts from the conclusion of Zola's controversial letter (translated by Leslie Derfler):

"The Affair has only now begun because only now are the positions clear; on the one hand, the guilty who do not want to see justice done; on the other, those who seek justice and will give their lives to see that it is carried out. Only time will tell whether we have been prepared for the most resounding disaster.

Mister President, please accept the assurance of my deepest respect." (qtd. Derfler 127-128)

[The Jews] come to France to make money, but the moment a fight is on, they hide behind the first tree. There are so many in the army because the Jew likes to parade around in fancy uniforms. Every country chases them out, there is a reason for that, and we must not allow them to occupy such a position in France" (qtd. Nord 104).

Degas was no better. Firing a model simply because she expressed reservations about Dreyfus's guilt, Degas would rail against Jews to the point of tears of fury. In one story told by Paul Durand-Ruel, Degas announced in an art gallery that he was going to visit the Paris law courts. The art dealer asked, "To attend the trial?" to which Degas replied, "No, to kill a Jew!" (qtd. Nord 104) Degas clashed with Cassatt, a good friend and Dreyfusard, and for a while, the two did not speak to each other (Nord 105). The falling out over the Dreyfus Affair left a permanent mark on relations within the Impressionists. Both Degas and Renoir refused to speak to Pissarro, and Degas did not attend Pissarro's funeral in 1903. Paul Cezanne, already upset over Zola's earlier novel L'Oeuvre (1886) that had criticized the Impressionist movement, never saw Zola again; their opposing views over the Dreyfus Affair separated the former childhood friends (Nord 105-106). With the Dreyfus Affair came the political impetus to break up the Impressionist movement.

While all these artists certainly held strong opinions about the Dreyfus Affair, Pissarro appears to have been the only Impressionist to have incorporated the Dreyfus Affair in his art. The art commentary on the affair came primarily from newspaper cartoons; both Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard art appeared throughout the 1890s in response to events during the scandal. Besides his famous letter, Zola also wrote essays in support of Dreyfus the year before, in 1897 (Burns 91). Zola's publications made him a target of anti-Dreyfusards in print. In one example, "There he is!" (1899), Zola emerges from a toilet carrying a Dreyfus doll. The bottom caption reads, "Truth comes out of its well," a parody on the French saying, "Truth is hidden at the bottom of the well." The insulting sketch of Zola was published in the anti-Dreyfusard journal, Psst…! on June 10, 1899 by Caran d'Ache (Kleeblatt 176, 178). d'Ache's more neutral sketch, "A Family Dinner" (1898), illustrates the divisive nature of the Dreyfus Affair. Published in Le Figaro on February 13, 1898, the cartoon first shows a family eating dinner with the caption, "Absolutely no talk of the Affair." In the second frame, the title explains it all: "They talked about it" (Burns 107-108). The family is in total chaos, literally at each other's throats because of the Dreyfus Affair. One of the most famous images from the Dreyfus Affair, "A Family Dinner" shows the great commotion within the home that Pissarro more subtlety portrayed in the streets.

A few artists, however, did venture to overtly portray the Dreyfus Affair in paint. In one such oil painting called She Is Not Drowning (1898, also known as Truth Leaving the Well), the Dreyfusard Edouard Debat-Ponsan depicts Truth emerging out of a well against clerical hypocrisy and military force. A group of admirers later gave the picture, based on the same French saying as There he is!, to Zola (Kleebatt 258). Debat-Ponsan's rendition of the Dreyfus Affair contains more obvious symbolism, with the priest and military figure trying to block the shining beacon of Truth. As such, She Is Not Drowning more clearly conveys the artist's political message and Dreyfusard sentiments than Pissarro's Avenue de l'Opera series. However, whatever Pissarro lacks in blatant political messages, he makes up with an ingenious metaphor of motion using everyday scenes on the streets.

Pictured:
Caran d'Ache, "There he is!" (1899)
Caran d'Ache, "A Family Dinner" (1898)
Eduoard Debat-Ponsan, She Is Not Drowning (1898)

1895
Jan. 5: Ceremony of Dreyfus's military degradation (Derfler xvii)
April 15: Dreyfus arrives at military prison at Devil's Island (Derfler xviii)

1896
Early March: Madame Bastian delivers the shreds of a small letter-telegram found in the wastebasket of the German attaché to Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart (Burns 62)
Aug. 27: Based on the petit bleau, Picquart names Esterhazy as the spy to General Boisdeffre (Derfler xviii)
Nov. 2: Commandment Henry presents an incriminating document he forged in Dreyfus's handwriting as newfound evidence (Burns 70)

1897
July 13-14: Louis Leblois, a lawyer and friend of Picquart, convinces August Scheurer-Kestner, vice president of the Senate, that Dreyfus is innocent and Scheurer-Kestner tells the Senate
Nov. 27: Zola publishes his first Dreyfusard article
Dec. 2: Esterhazy demands a court-martial to defend his honor, even though he has already been exonerated by the Army (Derfler xviii)

1898
Jan. 11: Esterhazy is acquitted in court
Jan. 13: Zola's J'accuse letter published in Dreyfusard L'Aurore
Jan. 16: The Ulan letter, an incriminating letter written by Esterhazy, is published in Le Figaro (Burns 88)
Feb. 7-23: Zola tried for libel and found guilty
Feb. 26: Army dismisses Picquart (Derfler xix)
July 7: Minister of War Cavaignac presents evidence of Dreyfus's guilt, including the Henry forgery, to the Chamber of Deputies, which votes to post the speech and document on every French town hall; Picquart quickly tells Cavaignac that the document is a forgery
July 13: Picquart arrested for communicating secret military documents (Burns 120)
Aug. 13: Captain Louis Cuignet concludes that document used Cavaignac speech a forgery and informs Cavaignac (Burns 121)
Aug. 30: Cavaignac questions Henry, who confesses to the forgery
Aug. 31: Henry commits suicide (Derfler xix)
Sept. 1: Esterhazy flees to England

1899
June 3: New court-martial reordered for Dreyfus
June 5: Zola goes back to France
June 9: Picquart freed from prison with all charges dismissed
Aug. 7 â€" Sept. 9: Dreyfus reconvicted with "extenuating circumstances" after Rennes court-martial (Burns 195)
Sept. 19: President Lourbet pardons Dreyfus

1902
April-May: Coalition of leftist Dreyfusard parties wins in national elections (Burns 196)
Sept. 30: Zola dies under mysterious circumstances (Derfler xx)

1903
Nov. 13: Pissarro dies (Brettell xiii)

1906
July 13: Army reinstates Picquart and Dreyfus (Derfler xxi)

1995
French army officially declares Dreyfus innocent (Derfler xxii)

Pictured:
H. Meyer, "The Traitor: The Degradation of Alfred Dreyfus"(1895)

Pissarro belonged to a movement now termed, 'anarchist-communism' that incorporated beliefs from economic communism and individual anarchism. Besides being friends with Mirbeau, Pissarro also gave substantial financial assistance to Jean Grave, the dominant figure in the French anarchist-communist movement (Herbert 103). These anarchists thought that man worked best in small groups, with communal, rather than national, collective ownership (Herbert 100). In Pissarro: His Life and Work, Ralph Shikes explains that "anarchism was opposed to all authoritative institutions that curbed man's freedom â€" the state (especially), the church, private property, even, some anarchists believed, the family" (Shikes 228). Critics isolate Pissarro's anarchism to his earlier rural works, linking his idealized, idyllic scenes without machinery to his belief in a peaceful society founded on rural communities (Thomson, R. 81). This easy connection between anarchism and rural imagery satisfies most art historians, but limits any political expression to only a part of Pissarro's paintings; during the last eight years of his life, Pissarro departed from his rural topics and painted eleven series set in Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, and Dieppe (Brettell vii). However, Pissarro's anarchist views extended far beyond the timeframe of his rural period. This affinity for the anarchists is perhaps most evident in his stance during the Dreyfus Affair, when he sided with the Dreyfusards against the Army and Church, institutions he regarded as corrupt.

Pictured:
Camille Pissarro, Hoarfrost (1873)

Sonya Hsieh is a freshman at Princeton University and hails from Vienna, Virginia (which she insists is not part of the South). And yes, before you ask, she did attend that nerdy but oh-so awesome high school, TJ. When not holed up in her room writing about Impressionism, Sonya can be found on Nassau chugging bubble tea, throwing impromptu dance parties in her hall, or getting dunked in the Woody Woo fountain. She has one pet rabbit named Eevee (after the Pokemon - totally her sister's idea). At Princeton, she hopes to discover the cure to cancer, solve the Middle East crisis, and become the next Yo-Yo Ma of piano. Pictured below is the aforementioned funny sister and rabbit.

Sonya first got interested in Impressionism in elementary school when the art teacher would point at weird blotches of color and explain the genius of Monet. As a rule, she likes appreciating art for its purely aesthetic value, which is somewhat ironic considering this essay is all about symbolism in art. However, Sonya does enjoy making connections between seemingly unrelated disciplines and integrating subjects together, like politics and art. She encountered the vague reference of Pissarro and the Dreyfus Affair in a book while frantically researching at the last minute somewhere in Marquand. Not knowing what she was getting herself into, Sonya added the vague reference to her pre-draft and as the overused cliche goes, the rest was history. She hopes that you have enjoyed reading her work and that you've learned something cool and exciting :)

(Fountain picture from John Jameson, the best photographer ever)

Pissarro Art:

Pissarro, Camille. Avenue de l'Opera: Morning, Sunshine. Private collection, Philadelphia.

Pissarro, Camille. Avenue de l'Opera, Place du Theatre Francais: Misty Weather. Private collection, New York.

Pissarro, Camille. Hoarfrost. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Pissarro, Camille. Place du Theatre Francais. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.

Pissarro, Camille. Place du Theatre Francais: Rain Effect. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Pissarro, Camille. Rue Saint-Honore: Afternoon, Rain Effect. Thyssen-Bormemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland.

Other Art:

d'Ache, Caran. "A Family Dinner." Cartoon. Le Figaro 13 Feb. 1898.

d'Ache, Caran. "There he is!" Cartoon. Psst…! 10 June 1899.

Debat-Ponsan, Eduoard. She Is Not Drowning. Musee de l'Hotel-de-Ville, Amboise, France.

Meyer, H. "The Traitor: The Degradation of Alfred Dreyfus." Illustration. Le Petit Journal. 13 Jan. 1895.

Monet, Claude. Boulevard des Capucines. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

Other Works:

Adler, Kathleen. "Camille Pissarro: City and Country in the 1890s." Studies on Camille Pissarro. Ed. Christopher Lloyd. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 99-116.

Brettell, Richard, and Pissarro, Joachim. The Impressionist and the City: Pissaro's Series Paintings. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.

Becker, Christoph. Camille Pissarro. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 1999.

Burns, Michael. France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.

Derfler, Leslie. The Dreyfus Affair. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Herbert, Robert, and Herbert, Eugenia. "Artists and Anarchism." From Millet to Leger: Essays in Social Art History. Ed. Robert Herbert. New Haven, CT: Yale Univeristy Press, 2002. 99-114.

Kleebatt, Norman. "Plates." The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice. Ed. Norman Kleeblatt. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. 153-266.

Lloyd, Christopher. Camille Pissarro. London: Macmillan London Ltd., 1981.

Lloyd, Christopher, and Distel, Anne. "Paintings." Pissarro. England: Balding and Mansell, 1980. 68-155.

Nord, Philip. "The Crisis of Impressionism." Impressionists and Politics: Art and Democracy in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge, 2000. 69-107.

Pissarro, Joachim. Camille Pissarro. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1993.

Shikes, Ralph E. Pissarro, His Life and Work. New York: Horizon Press, 1980.

Thomson, Belinda. "Camille Pissarro and Symbolism: Some Thoughts Prompted by the Recent Discovery of an Annotated Article." The Burlington Magazine (Jan., 1982): 14-21, 23.

Thomson, Richard. Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape, and Rural Labor. New York: New Amsterdam, 1990.

Weber, Eugen. "Foreword." The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice. Ed. Norman Kleeblatt. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. xxv-xxviii.

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)

Zola's letter sparked a wave of anti-Semitism throughout France. Crowds smashed windows of Jewish shops in Nantes the day after the letter was published. Elsewhere, mobs shouted "Death to the Jews," "Death to Zola," and "Death to Dreyfus" in the street. Riots lasting up to six days erupted in Rouen, Bordeaux, and Marseilles. The commotion was greatest in Algeria, then part of France and about one-sixth Jewish. Jewish shops were destroyed and entire neighborhoods were set on fire. The explosion of violence resulted in several stonings and a Jew bludgeoned to death (Derfler 129). Such conflict in the streets could not have escaped unnoticed to Pissarro.

At the time of Zola's controversial publication, Pissarro was busy painting the Place du Theatre in his series (Weber xxv), in which the high tensions manifested in his portrayal of significantly more people through his series as a hidden metaphor for the public campaigns on both sides for the Affair. When Zola was arrested for libel, Pissarro was too afraid to sign a petition to support Zola for fear of deportation since Pissarro was a Danish citizen. Even so, he followed the Dreyfus Affair with keen interest, to the point that his wife Julie complained, "Doubtless the Zola affair takes all your time, so you can't write to me. That interests you much more than your family" (qtd. Adler 111). The tense environment may have led to Pissarro's more covert commentary through his paintings, rather than overt participation or art in the Affair.

Pictured:
Camille Pissarro, Avenue de l'Opera, Place du Theatre Francais: Misty Weather (1898)

Pissarro develops this idea about decision-making on the streets of France further through the interaction of people and architecture to show the heightened controversy. To the right of the Avenue de l'Opera sits the Place du Theatre Francais, which provides an interesting juxtaposition of angular and circular shapes to sift movement in Pissarro's work. In both Avenue de l'Opera: Morning, Sunshine and Avenue de l'Opera, Place du Theatre Francais: Misty Weather (1898), the straight lines of the Avenue stand in contrast with the curved structures of the fountain and the roundabouts. "The traffic itself no longer follows the orthogonal, orderly pattern as seen in the Boulevard Montmartre series," Brettell states. "Here it moves around sets of roundabouts. Yet there is something organic in the way the individual components (pedestrians, carriages, omnibuses, wheelbarrows) form a set of patterns all of their own, free, yet organized, autonomous, yet limited" (Brettell 82). While his analysis and close-read of the painting is correct, Brettell fails to make the connection between these conflicting shapes and the conflicting forces of French society in the late 1890s. The populace traverses through the straight and curved boundaries, possibly a pictorial representation of the French people choosing sides during the Dreyfus Affair. These impediments to traffic balance the paintings, with a line of symmetry dividing the Avenue de l'Opera: Morning, Sunshine almost down the middle. The two sides of the painting and the two curvilinear shapes split the traveling populace, much like the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s.

Pictured:
Camille Pissarro, Avenue de l'Opera: Morning, Sunshine (1898)
Camille Pissarro, Avenue de l'Opera, Place du Theatre Francais: Misty Weather (1898)

I have found a room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre which has a superb view over the Avenue de l'Opera and that corner of the Place du Palais-Royal. It's going to be beautiful to paint. It is not very aesthetic perhaps, but I am delighted to be able to try to do these Paris streets which are often called ugly, but which are so silvery, so luminous and so lively and which are so different from the boulevards â€" it's completely modern (qtd. Brettell 79).

This letter shows that Pissarro hoped to capture the "modernity" of Paris through his portrayals of her streets full of people. But perhaps he hoped to capture something else as well: Pissarro's choice of the Avenue de l'Opera suggests his fascination with the dramatic flair of the Dreyfus affair playing out in Paris. The opera suited the operatic nature of the Affair, complete with its own set of protagonists and antagonists, a suffering hero, and political intrigue. This symbolic venue would help set the stage for his political messages about commotion in the streets in both his paintings and during the Dreyfus Affair.

However, Pissarro did not clearly depict this commotion from the beginning of the Avenue de l'Opera series, just as Pissarro did not automatically join the Dreyfusards in the political fight. While Pissarro may have been among the first to react during the Dreyfus Affair, according to Philip Nord in Impressionist and Politics (Nord 102), Brettell writes that, "[Pissarro] appeared fairly non-committal in his first letter, reflecting in this tendency of most anarchists, who at the beginning of the case, were neither for nor against the affair. To them, it seemed merely confirm their belief that corruption was inherent in capitalistic society" (Brettell 80). In one of his first paintings in the series, Rue Saint-Honore Afternoon Rain Effect (1897), the social energy is subdued, similar to Pissarro's first muted reaction to the Dreyfus Affair. Most of the carriages line the street, completely stationary, and only a few people brave the weather to walk around outside. The movement is much more contained and calm through the drizzling rain. These tentative views, both politically and pictorially through movement, showed his initial reluctance to get involved in the Dreyfus Affair.

Pictured:
Camille Pissarro, Rue Saint-Honore: Afternoon, Rain Effect (1897)

As an anarchist and Jew, Pissarro was a Dreyfusard: he disliked the reactionary Army and the Church, which he thought were prejudiced and authoritarian. In his correspondence, Pissarro referred to the Dreyfusards as "free men" fighting against an unholy alliance of "generals and sprinklers of holy water" (qtd. Nord 102). Such an unsavory picture of Catholic priests plotting with the Army as part of an institution-wide conspiracy stems from his views about the organized Catholic Church. Besides having anti-Semitic outbursts, the Catholic Church was perceived as a threat to justice as it attempted to regain power. According to Leslie Drefler in The Dreyfus Affair, Pissarro's friend and fellow Dreyfusard, Zola, "believed that Catholic fanatics were eager to promote religious war, recreate a medieval theocracy, and repudiate the revolutionary tradition of liberty and equality" (Drefler 113). Consequently, Pissarro joined the Dreyfusard side, passionately believing in justice for the wrongly accused Jew (Brettell 80).