El puente de Saint-Sever, Rouen: Niebla

This impressionist painting depicts a peaceful scene in Rouen, a city in northern France. The work was created at a time when there was a great deal of cultural and political conflict happening in France. Anti-Semitism was on the rise. Many conservative French people were hostile toward Jewish people. They accused them of oppressing French society. 

Camille Pissarro was a French impressionist and neo-impressionist artist. He was born in the Danish West Indies to Jewish parents. Throughout his life he was part of various cultural groups without fully belonging to a specific community. Some of Pissarro’s colleagues avoided him because of his Jewish ancestry and politics. He was rejected by well-known French impressionist artists like Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Pissarro traveled to Rouen several times and created many impressionist paintings of the city’s bridges. Impressionism became a popular style of painting in the 1860s. Impressionist artists focused more on color and form than realistic-looking scenes. They aimed to capture the essence of a subject in their paintings.