Boulevard Montmartre at Night

Down the centre of Pissarro's Boulevard Montmartre at Night, a row of tall lamp-posts carry cold white bulbs. They are electric lights, installed on the boulevard in 1878. Pissarro paints them with blue haloes. The shop windows on either side of the street are warmer, yellower, softer. Those are gas lights, the old ones. He is painting the exact night Paris was switching over. The warm light is on the shop windows. The cold light is in the middle of the street. Now at National Gallery, London @nationalgallery