The Boulevard Montmartre at Night

A grand Paris boulevard stretches into the rainy dark, its wet pavement and the night air aglow with the smeared reflections of gas lamps, lit shop windows, and the lanterns of carriages, the crowds reduced to flickering dabs. Pissarro painted it from a hotel window as part of his great series of the grands boulevards, here venturing rarely into the night. Now in London's National Gallery, the Boulevard Montmartre at Night is a dazzling study of artificial light and atmosphere - the modern, electrified city seized as a shimmer of colored reflections in the wet darkness.