About the Place du Carrousel

The Place du Carrousel is the former location of Tuileries Palace. This location has significance and history pertaining to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy. In 1789 a mob forced the royal family to move from Versailles to Tuileries Palace. In 1792 Tuileries Palace was invaded by mainly working-class people and a guillotine was erected in the Place du Carrousel and King Louis XVI was put on trial. King Louis XVI was executed most prominently for high treason on January 21, 1793 at the Place de la Révolution or the Place de la Concorde which is between the Seine and Tuileries Garden. In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte moved into Tuileries Palace.

Tuileries Palace was later burned, and it is unclear to me exactly who burned it and why and it may officially be a mystery. Currently, the Place du Carrousel includes the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre Museum. The provenance explains the painting was confiscated during WWII and eventually restituted. This painting is a view from a hotel room Pissarro rented on the rue de Rivoli. In his older age an eye infection often would not allow him to paint outside. He was either 69 or 70 years old when he painted this. Pissarro's 1897 "Boulevard Monmartre, Spring Morning" sold for over $32 million (19.9 million pounds) in 2014. The most expensive price paid for a Pissarro painting (as of 2022).

Impressionist paintings often represent progress and focusing on the present moment. It was a novel style as the norm at the time was painting heroic moments of the past and staged scenes and religious themes and portraits and using invisible brushstrokes with little texture to make the paintings look realistic etc. Painting subjects were more idealized and romanticized. Impressionist painters focused on the present and painted everyday 'mundane' scenes and people and used visible brushstrokes etc.