The view faces the network of circular and rectilinear features surrounding Grand Bassin des Tuilere located in the eastern section of the gardens. Pissarro cropped and otherwise manipulated this perspective on fifteen of the twenty-eight canvases he produced of Tuileries. Designed by seventeenth-century landscape architect Andre Le Norte, the formality of these interlocking elements do not betray Pissarro’s well-regarded knack for avoiding cleverly arranged compositions in part because he fragmented the austere, symmetrical layout. He also achieved a natural elegance by accentuating the horizon and lending a stronger sense of a panoramic expanse and because he utilized a rather sly compositional device by ‘squaring up’ the view to the distanced twin spires of the neo-gothic basilica Sainte-Clotilde, a centered point of interest that rises above that deep expanse reinforced by strong diagonals.  Lastly, he forgoes any touristy affectations by limiting figural references to the actual garden sculptures intact at Tuileries though admittedly, it is difficult to discern whether or not the painter coyly added a warm body or two amidst mythological deities of stone or bronze.   

The view is southwesterly, the shadows suggesting Pissarro worked this canvas during the waning hours of a late spring afternoon. He deepens our appreciation of that time of season and day by creating an intoxicating optical mix of predominately analogous cool-toned hues plied together — soft greens and yellows, as well as tamped-down blues and mauves that coalesce into an atmospheric halo-like effect. It comes as close to one of nature’s most glorious lighting phenomenon; a harmonic sensation brought to full effect here by the airy arboreal effect of the tree branches that rake the sky and provide veils of an ameliorating guise.

After 1889 when Camille Pissarro began to suffer from a chronic eye infection and found himself increasingly unable to work out of doors, he painted separated from the world by windows frequently traveling and living a life tethered to hotels in order to vary his subjects. Le Jardin des Tuileries, après-midi, soleil was executed with that profound physical deficit. Yet it retains all the vitality and dexterity of the best Impressionism of the period. That is no surprise.  In a career that spanned the second half of the nineteenth century, Camille Pissarro is as celebrated for his ever-present freshness of eye and spirit as his well-known openness to new ideas. We tend to think of Pissarro as the most rural of the Impressionist painters, yet he produced eleven urban series encompassing more than 300 cityscapes during the last decade of his life. Le Jardin des Tuileries, après-midi, soleil may come as a revelation to some, but it is among those paintings that establish his place as a painter of his own epoch that found the sublime everywhere.