Examining Pissarro's factory paintings is hardly possible without also looking at his paintings of urban settings in general. In many of them, the skyline of the depicted city is freckled with numerous factory smokestacks. And, while the factories aren't necessarily the focus of the painting, Pissarro does draw attention to them by forcing his viewers to follow the painting to the background, much as he did in Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen. He links the factories to the cities, much as they are linked economically and politically in reality.
But, Pissarro's urban paintings could be used as a completely different set of evidence for the contradiction between what he painted and what he believed politically as an anarchist. Anarchy condemned the cities perhaps more than it condemned industry, since one of the party's major tenets was the abolition of organization in society. It held that the cities fueled capitalism, and that the most proper form of government was a small, agrarian commune, most likely in a rural area.
It is most fascinating, then, not only that Pissarro painted so many cityscapes in the latter part of his life (more than any other Impressionist), but also that he paints them in such a manner as to glorify them, much as he does the factories. Rather than painting the cities ugly and dirty, highlighting every negative aspect, he causes them to come alive, depicting them full of motion and life.
Images counterclockwise from top:
1) Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras, 1897
2) The Fair at Dieppe, Sunshine, Afternoon, 1901
3) The Old Market at Rouen and the Rue de l'Epicerie, 1898
4) Avenue de l'Opera, Paris, Sun on a Winter Morning, 1898
In many of his racetrack paintings, the viewer sees silhoutted factories in the background, smokestacks protruding into the sky. Industry is clearly not the focus of these paintings, but it is intriguing to speculate as to Degas' reason for placing them so. He could be highlighting the contrast between nature and industry. In the foreground, viewers see horse and rider; in the background, a more powerful force, looming in wait to somehow make nature obselete. It seems that Degas felt this kind of conflict, and very subtly brought attention to it in some of his racetrack paintings: very different indeed from Pissarro's factory paintings on the Oise, where the plant is the clear subject of the painting, but at the same time smoothly blends with its the nature by which it is surrounded.
Armand Guillaumin, in Sunset at Ivry, also pits nature against industry, where Pissarro's work was more likely to harmonize the two. Here, he depicts one of natures most beautiful symbols, the sunset, being covered over by black clouds of smoke being emitted by the stacks of the factory. While perhaps he does acknowledge the beauty of this factory's silhouette, he certainly puts the factory in battle with its surroundings, as opposed to the peace that Pissarro creates in his work.
With regard to anarchy, industry, and Pissarro, contradictions exist not only between the artist's political convictions and his factory paintings, but also occur between his rural, agrarian paintings and his factory paintings. Camille Pissarro didn't always paint factories and cityscapes; he was known more, in fact, for his rural, countryside paintings, often of peasants at work or at leisure in the fields or elsewhere. Indeed, his most beloved paintings don't go against the grain of his political beliefs, but in fact reinforce them.
the contradiction between Pissarro's politics and his factory paintings.
Like most of the Impressionists, Pissarro's personal life and his road to success as a painter were neither simple nor easy. Born in 1830 in the Virgin Islands, Pissarro was the son of a general store owner. His parents sent him to boarding school in Paris, where he first discovered his interest in painting, encouraged by a teacher of his. Upon his return to the Virgin Islands, he was sent to work as a clerk in his father's store, ever sketching in his free moments (Rewald 10). When it became too much to bear, Pissarro ran away from his parents to Venezuela in order to pursue painting with an artist he met on his home island. Finally, his parents conceded to allow him to return to Paris and to seek success as an artist (Rewald 11).
On his arrival, Pissarro met and was influenced by such artists as Corot, Millet, Daubigny, and Courbet. He began to discover his own convictions with regard to art. Very much a realist, he believed that an artist should study and become in touch with nature (and other subject matter) in order to paint it as accurately as possible. Instead of pandering to the public, in his paintings giving false beauty to the subject, Pissarro painted as he saw, presenting to his viewers his "sensation" (Rewald 13). Though these views remained unpopular (and, perhaps more importantly at some points in his life, unprofitable) nearly to the end of his days, Pissarro upheld them in every work of art that he produced.
As with other Impressionists, such as Monet and Renoir, Pissarro dealt with a financial struggle while he sought to make his living painting. His first son, Lucien, was born to him shortly after he moved to France by Julie Vellay, whom he eventually married in London (Rewald 15). So, from an early age, Camille Pissarro had a family to support, and often his only source of income, besides what little he made on his paintings, was a meager allowance from his parents in the Virgin Islands. His financial burdens make his unwavering dedication to his convictions all the more admirable.
At the time of the exhibitions, and shortly thereafter, Pissarro became a bit depressed. Now in his fifties, he had seen little improvement in his status since his twenties, and he now had a wife and six children for which he was responsible (Rewald 34). He began to doubt his worth and talent as an artist, but nonetheless continued to be true to his beliefs, refusing to sell out to the public. However, in the 1890s, when the ideas of Impressionism began to catch on in the art world, Pissarro likewise caught on. For the first time in his life, he was able to enjoy a comfortable livelihood (Rewald 45). Suffering from eye disease, he lived out his life painting mostly indoors, relaxing after his struggle to achieve fame. Camille Pissarro died in 1903.
Upon deeper analysis of the positioning of the factory in Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen, one can see an even more subtle significance in the placement of the factory inside the city. In the painting, the bridge, the smoke trail of the steamship, and the pattern of light on the water create a dominant diagonal, causing the viewer's eyes to inherently move toward the smokestack of the factory in the background. So, while at first glance the painting does not seem to be focused on the factory, but rather on the boat and the bridge, these two major elements tend to shift focus from them onto the chimney of the factory. Thus, the significance of Pissarro's placement of the factory in the painting goes beyond the obvious, its placement in an urban scene: there is significance in its placement within the urban scene. Instead of just placing the factory in the city, he makes it the ruler, the center of attention in the city, that to which everything in the scene seems to lead. Pissarro might be saying subtly that all that beauty, motion, and life going on in Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen can be attributed in part to industry, as opposed to, as we would assume based on his politics, attributing to industry only negative consequences, such as corruption and pollution. This would not be an incredibly bold message for him to be sending, were he not an anarchist. But, since he is, his paintings in which he glorifies an essential capitalist utopia, are quite intriguingly contradictory.]]>
In Factory near Pontoise, for example, by placing the factory in a rural scene, and at the same time making the factory appear beautiful, Pissarro is able to say that the spread of industry is need not be viewed negatively, a pictorial statement that is in direct conflict with anarchist thought. Here, the structure of the factory is placed right up against the bank of the river, as if to show nature meeting industry head on. The lines of the river and the plane between it and the factory are all horizontal, as are those of the sky. The building, on the other hand, is more vertical with its mutiple smokestacks and the vertical walls of the building itself. As such, the building seems woven into its surroundings, becoming an indispensable part of the landscape on the river Oise. The smoke rising from the factory's stacks, rather than being painted as dirty, spoiling its surroundings, appears in Pissarro's work as another part of the sky's beauty. Using swirling brushstrokes and pleasant hues, the artist draws our attention to the aesthetics of the billowing smoke, making it seem as pretty as the white puffs of clouds also pictured in the sky. Therefore, while professed political convictions were against the presence of factory chimneys on the river Oise, here he paints modernity as it exists, beautifying the factory, a symbol of the industry and capitalism that he was supposedly against. In fact, John House in Impressions of France: Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and their rivals explains that, in his factory paintings of 1873, Pissarro "[rejected] the conventional notions of what constituted an appropriate subject for fine art. In fact the roofs, gables, and chimneys of the Chalon factory, as shown here, can be seen as a travesty of the characteristic forms of churches and castles, traditional choices for such motifs" (House Impressions 206). Here, House goes so far as to imply that Pissarro held these factories in such high regard that he places on them a degree of sanctity, painting them as he and other artists might paint "churches or castles," places of worship. Therefore, as an anarchist, who would have been convinced that industrialization was evil, Pissarro does the opposite of what we would expect. ]]>
Similarly, in View of Pontoise, Quai du Pothius (1868) the factory that appears in the background of the painting is certainly not the center of attention for the viewer, therefore giving little to no political commentary on the factory, as was to appear in Pissarro's work in later years. Instead, this work is more of a narrative about the two figures on the quai. But we can see development toward Pissarro's fascination with industry in this positioning of the factory in his painting of 1868. As Christopher Lloyd explains in Camille Pissarro, the artist has lined up the factory's chimney with the figures in the foreground (Lloyd 59). Pissarro creates a diagonal line which viewers' eyes tend to follow. So, while it doesn't rob the viewer's attention from the foreground scene, it is certainly noted at least briefly by the viewer. Also, unlike the chimney of The Little Factory, the chimney seen in this painting leaves a trail of smoke across the sky. In this way, Pissarro draws marginal attention to the factory by placing it on the horizon, so that whenever viewers look at the sky in the painting, they will also see the chimney of the factory. ]]>
Of course, if we begin by examining Pissarro's earliest factory paintings, from the 1860s and early 1870s, before his political principles were firmly in place, we see that they do not glorify industry as his later ones do. This happens because of the placement of the factories in the painting. Viewers see them only at a distance. They occupy positions in the backgrounds of the paintings, which always feature something else as the main focus of attention. In The Small Factory, for example, painted from 1863 to 1865, Pissarro gives the building nothing noteworthy to make it stand out as either positive or negative. Indeed, the factory in the title is arguably not even the focus of the painting, as it includes in the foreground depictions of two pairs of human figures. In the background, with the little factory, Pissarro includes a house which is nearly as big, drawing nearly as much attention. Without the tall chimney (which doesn't even smoke), it would be impossible to tell whether the painting was depicting a factory or a white house in the country. In fact, it is surprising that the title of the painting is The Small Factory. By titling the painting so, and then all but dismissing the factory in the picture, Pissarro emphasizes his apparent indiffence toward its existence. He does nothing to distinguish the building, nothing to draw attention to it, and in doing so gives his viewers a painting devoid of social commentary on the matter of industrialization, whether positive or negative.]]>