The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning

In the pictureSeen from a high window, a broad boulevard runs diagonally from the lower left of the picture to the upper right. Carriages and people are scattered along it as black dots, and leafless street trees and grayish buildings line both sides. The sky is pale gray, the buildings pale violet and cream. Everything lies in the hazy light of a winter morning.

BackgroundIn February 1897, Pissarro rented a hotel room overlooking the Boulevard Montmartre and painted fourteen pictures from the same window over two months: morning, afternoon, night, rain, snow, the Mardi Gras festival. It was the method found by a sixty-seven-year-old painter for whom working outdoors had become difficult because of an eye ailment. Like Monet's series, it pursued the changing light on a single place, but Pissarro's interest was the movement of the city.

Puzzle tipIn this puzzle, the colors are pale and similar, so it is no pushover. First build the skeleton of the picture by connecting the diagonal of the boulevard (the bright band) and the edges of the buildings on both sides, then fill the boulevard with the pieces that have black dots of carriages and people. Place the building pieces by the grid of windows and the rooflines, and leave the sky for last, to fill the empty spaces.