Factories in Pontoise
It is not until the 1870s, however, that Pissarro sincerely attempts to draw attention to and to comment on the factories of nineteenth-century France, glorifying them through their placement in his paintings rather than degrading or ignoring them as we would expect from an anarchist. In 1873, Pissarro painted a series of very bold paintings representing factories in Pontoise. “This was a significant choice as few landscape painters of the time painted factories,” explain Francis Frascina and Nigel Blake in Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (Modernity 131). What this means is that few painters of the time dared to even explore the topic of industrialization, and certainly none went so far as Pissarro to romanticize and celebrate it as he does in his set of four factory paintings of 1873: Factory near Pontoise; The Factory on the Oise, Pontoise; The Factory of Pontoise; and River Oise near Pontoise. In them, though he creates a harmony between industry and nature, the factories are clearly to focus of the paintings. Instead of placing them in the background, focusing on the river or the trees or the surrounding landscape, this time Pissarro asks his viewers to focus on the factories. Critics like Blake and Frascina consider this Pissarro's method of degrading industry, saying that his placement of the factories dominantly in the foreground represents industry pushing nature aside (Modernity 133). But, in so critiquing these paintings they assume that Pissarro, as most anarchists would, viewed the industrialization of rural areas negatively. They fail to notice the beauty of the factories as motifs, which Pissarro exploited on numerous occasions. As a result, we can assume that he did not mean to comment negatively on industrialization, but only to show in his work its latent beauty. Looking at these paintings, we see no evidence of a negative portrayal of the factories. Where his depiction of the factory could portray it as dirty and menacing, Pissarro instead paints the factory as a clean, grand structure, commanding the respect of the countryside that it occupies without detracting from its beauty. He celebrates the existence of the factories, blending them perfectly with the surrounding natural scenery.