Impressionist walks around Pontoise

“Balades impressionnistes” are guided walking tours organised by Cergy-Pontoise Tourist Office. Participants are led on discovery trails around the places where the artist Camille Pissarro lived between 1866 and 1883. He invited Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin to come and paint in the area. These four artists combined produced over 500 works with Pontoise as their theme.

Two circuits wend their way around town. One takes you via the streets and lanes of the Hermitage Quarter, the other exploring the Oise’s riverbanks. On the guided walks, enjoy anecdotes about Camille Pissarro’s life and works, his artistic encounters, the influences that shaped him and the encouragement he proffered to his many friends. To help illustrate the guides’ presentations, reproductions of canvases now scattered across the globe stand in the precise spots where they were originally painted, enabling you to look back at the landscapes these artists depicted. Putting yourself in their position helps to appreciate their vision as well as to focus on their aesthetic.

Pontoise’s Hermitage Quarter is renowned as one of the places where Camille Pissarro enjoyed living. He captured it in his canvas Les Toits rouges, on display at the Musée d’Orsay in central Paris. Back with the banks of the Oise, he painted the Quai du Pothuis and the Pont de Pontoise, quai Fontaine, two spots to which you’re taken on the balades impressionnistes.

For those of you who prefer to explore on your own, pick up a map with the walking trails marked on it from Cergy-Pontoise Tourist Office.

For those of you tempted by a trip out on the Oise, an Impressionist river cruise is also possible, leaving from Pontoise. Admire a series of landscapes memorably depicted by the greatest 19^th-century painters, taking in Pontoise’s ramparts, Hermitage Quarter and Sente du Chou, followed by Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, and finishing with the Valhermeil Quarter and Chaponval Station at Auvers-sur-Oise.