Paris Boulevard at Night

Bonnard may have based this painting of the Boulevard de Clichy (in the artists' quarter of Montmartre) on the view from his studio window. Bonnard captures the still-novel spectacle of artificially illuminated night, with trees washed by light from below and shadows cast in multiple directions. Paris's early adoption of gas and electric light had helped make the city seem the very capital of modernity in the nineteenth century.