The first drops on the café awning. Then the smell, that mineral smell of wet stone. Within minutes the pavements turn silver, the umbrellas open like flowers, and the whole street slows down.
Most people hurry home. A few of us secretly love it.
A crossroads near Saint-Lazare
In 1877, Gustave Caillebotte painted a crossroads in the new Paris, where the rue de Turin, rue de Moscou, rue Clapeyron and rue de Saint-Pétersbourg meet, near the Gare Saint-Lazare. Today it's called the place de Dublin. You can still stand there.
It was a brand-new city then. Baron Haussmann had torn down old medieval streets to build wide boulevards and pale stone buildings, all of the same height. Caillebotte, who had grown up in the middle of this transformation, painted it in the rain.
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago
What to notice
It's huge, more than two metres high, so the couple on the right walk towards us almost at life size. Look at:
- The cobblestones, each one catching a little light.
- The green lamppost, splitting the painting in two.
- The umbrellas, all the same grey, tilted at slightly different angles.
- The people: none of them looking at one another. Each one alone together, under their own small roof.
It was shown that April at the third Impressionist exhibition, then barely seen in public again for years.
A rain walk meditation
Next time it rains, don't wait for it to stop.
- Take an umbrella and walk slowly, at half your usual pace.
- Listen to the rain on the umbrella. Notice how the sound changes under trees, under balconies, in the open.
- Look down: find the reflections in the puddles, the lamps, the shop windows, the sky.
- Look up: notice how the stone of the buildings darkens when it's wet.
- Breathe in the smell of the rain. Let it be the only thing you think about for ten steps.
- Find somewhere warm to stop, a café, a covered passage, a doorway, and watch the street for a moment before you go on.
For more wet-weather ideas, here are the covered passages of Paris and a rainy-day museum guide.
Something for a grey afternoon
The First Letter is a short sensory meditation on receiving a letter, with a sample of our magazine "(meditating) On Art". It's free, and it's lovely to read with the rain against the window.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi