Бульвар Капуцинок

Monet set up on an upper balcony at 35 boulevard des Capucines, in a building owned by the photographer Nadar, and looked down at the winter crowd during Carnival in the early months of 1874. A few weeks later that same building would host the first exhibition of the painters soon called Impressionists. Monet caught the boulevard as pure movement, the strollers below reduced to quick dark dabs, the bare plane trees, the smoky light of a Paris February. When work in this manner went on show, one hostile critic sneered at those flecks of paint as black tongue-lickings. Two men in top hats stand watching from a balcony at the right edge, looking out over the crowd much as Monet himself did.