.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The paintings that Pissarro executed in and around Pontoise in 1872 and 1873 are widely considered the most beautiful and successful of the artist's career. It was during these years--"the classic Pontoise period," according to Richard Brettell--that Pissarro fully developed his Impressionist technique, adopting a lighter, brighter palette and a more delicate touch. His Pontoise pictures were to have a profound influence upon a whole new generation of painters, notably Cézanne and Gauguin, who came to Pontoise to work alongside the older artist; Cézanne later referred to Pissarro as the first Impressionist, and proclaimed, "We may all descend from Pissarro" (quoted in B.E. White, Impressionists Side By Side, New York, 1996, p. 109). Rue de village, Auvers-sur-Oise is a fine and characteristic example of Pissarro's work from this pivotal period, its tonalities warm and harmonious, brushwork free yet compact, composition balanced and geometric, and overall mood picturesque and serene.
Pontoise is a small town about twenty-five miles northwest of Paris which marks the border of the Vexin and Ile-de-France regions, overlooking the valley of Montmorency. By the second half of the nineteenth century, it was a bustling center for poultry and agricultural supplies, with numerous factories and a railway linking it to the capital. Pissarro had lived there between 1866 and 1868 before departing for London and then Louveciennes; in February of 1872, the artist and his family returned to Pontoise, remaining this time for more than ten years. With the help of Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, they initially found rented accomodations at Pontoise; in October of 1873, they moved into a newly constructed house on the rue de l'Hermitage, a peaceful country lane running from the river Oise to the neighboring village of Ennery. The landscape in and around Pontoise provided Pissarro with seemingly limitless artistic inspiration, and the works from this period depict a complex and diverse array of motifs: the tranquil, sun-drenched streets of Pontoise itself (fig. 1); the towpaths lining the banks of the Oise (fig. 2); the vegetable gardens at L'Hermitage; the wheat harvests and haystacks near Ennery; the plowed fields bordering the route Saint-Antoine; the railway and the cast-iron railway bridge; the factories belonging to Chalon and Cie. and Monsieur Arneuil. The present picture is one of just two paintings that Pissarro made in 1872 and 1873 at Auvers-sur-Oise, a small, rural hamlet near Pontoise (Location unknown; P&V 228). Both images depict a narrow footpath lined by rustic, thatched cottages; in the present work, the artist has chosen a viewpoint farther to the right, producing a more balanced composition, and has also lowered the horizon line, affording a greater role to the luminous, cloud-flecked sky.
Describing the works from these years, Richard Brettell writes:
When the history of Impressionism is rewritten in another hundred years, Pissarro's paintings of 1872 and 1873 will be considered his masterpieces, as great, in their way, as Corot's work from his first trips to Italy or Monet's landscapes from the late 1860s... The style of the classic Pontoise period shows a balance between construction and sensation that Pissarro never again achieved... In returning from Louveciennes and its restricted imagery to Pontoise, Pissarro had returned to his own landscape, rejecting implicitly the kind of landscape world endorsed by Monet and Renoir for the more bracing 'realities' of his own. His style, although technically unchanged since the Louveciennes and Upper Norwood days, broadened somewhat. His palette became lighter and brighter... His execution became more confident and unproblematic without losing its fundamentally geometric quality. What Pissarro did in his paintings of this period was to revel in the sheer variety of the site (R. Brettell, op. cit., pp. 151, 153, and 160).
In a related vein, Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel have commented:
Stylistically, the first half of the 1870s is perhaps Pissarro's best known creative period, and the canvases painted in England and shortly afterwards in France have been more readily appreciated than those painted at any other time in his whole career. The artist retains a firmly controlled geometric structure as the framework for his compositions, but he employs a lighter touch in his brushwork and a brighter palette, both of which show the influence of Monet, whose technique of freely applying broken, separate patches of pure pigment Pissarro approached closely at this time. The paintings dating from the opening years of the 1870s therefore may, like those of Monet and Renoir, with good reason be described as the most purely impressionist in Pissarro's entire oeuvre (C. Lloyd and A. Distel, Pissarro, Hayward Gallery, exh. cat., London, 1980-1981, p. 79).
Although Pissarro is reported to have lacked confidence in his work at this time, his doubts were not shared by his friends and colleagues. As Antoine Guillemet wrote to Pissarro at Pontoise:
I have done the rue Lafitte and have visited the galleries, including Durand-Ruel's. What I wanted to say is that everywhere I saw charming and really perfect things of yours and that I felt anxious to tell you this immediately... Thus I saw especially at Durand-Ruel bright and lively pictures, varied in a word, which gave me the greatest pleasure (quoted in K. Adler, Camille Pissarro: A Biography, London, 1978, p. 51).
In the summer of 1872, Pissarro was joined in Pontoise by Cézanne, nine years his junior. During the next decade, the two artists executed at least twenty paintings side-by-side in Pontoise, Auvers, and the environs, and also made eight portraits of one another. A view of Auvers that Cézanne made in 1872-1873 (fig. 3) depicts a scene very similar to the present picture: a curving path bordered by small, steep-roofed cottages. The influence of Pissarro is evident in the light, varied palette and fleet, vibratory touch of Cézanne's townscape--a striking contrast to the dark tonalities and rough facture which had dominated the younger artist's work in the previous decade. Cézanne himself repeatedly acknowledged his artistic debt to Pissarro. As late as the 1900s, he listed himself in an exhibition catalogue as "Paul Cézanne, pupil of Pissarro;" he described Monet and Pissarro as "the two great masters, the only two," and elsewhere wrote, "As for old Pissarro, he was a father to me; someone to turn to for advice, somebody like the good Lord Himself" (quoted in B.E. White, op. cit., p. 109). Pissarro, in turn, was a staunch supporter of Cézanne's work. He invited Cézanne to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, and by the time of his death owned more than forty of Cézanne's works; in a letter to his son Lucien in 1896, Pissarro recalled, "For thirty years [I] defended him with so much energy and conviction!" (quoted in ibid., p. 109).
In 1890, nearly two decades after Pissarro and Cézanne had worked at Auvers, Van Gogh selected a comparable view of the town to paint, possibly even the same street (fig. 4).
(fig.1) Camille Pissarro, La route de Gisors à Pontoise, effet de neige, 1873, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
(fig. 2) Camille Pissarro, L'Oise aux environs de Pontoise, 1873,
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
(fig. 3) Paul Cézanne, La vieille route à Auvers-sur-Oise, 1872-1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 4) Vincent van Gogh, Rue de village, 1890, Ateneumin Taidemuseo, Helsinki.
Pontoise is a small town about twenty-five miles northwest of Paris which marks the border of the Vexin and Ile-de-France regions, overlooking the valley of Montmorency. By the second half of the nineteenth century, it was a bustling center for poultry and agricultural supplies, with numerous factories and a railway linking it to the capital. Pissarro had lived there between 1866 and 1868 before departing for London and then Louveciennes; in February of 1872, the artist and his family returned to Pontoise, remaining this time for more than ten years. With the help of Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, they initially found rented accomodations at Pontoise; in October of 1873, they moved into a newly constructed house on the rue de l'Hermitage, a peaceful country lane running from the river Oise to the neighboring village of Ennery. The landscape in and around Pontoise provided Pissarro with seemingly limitless artistic inspiration, and the works from this period depict a complex and diverse array of motifs: the tranquil, sun-drenched streets of Pontoise itself (fig. 1); the towpaths lining the banks of the Oise (fig. 2); the vegetable gardens at L'Hermitage; the wheat harvests and haystacks near Ennery; the plowed fields bordering the route Saint-Antoine; the railway and the cast-iron railway bridge; the factories belonging to Chalon and Cie. and Monsieur Arneuil. The present picture is one of just two paintings that Pissarro made in 1872 and 1873 at Auvers-sur-Oise, a small, rural hamlet near Pontoise (Location unknown; P&V 228). Both images depict a narrow footpath lined by rustic, thatched cottages; in the present work, the artist has chosen a viewpoint farther to the right, producing a more balanced composition, and has also lowered the horizon line, affording a greater role to the luminous, cloud-flecked sky.
Describing the works from these years, Richard Brettell writes:
When the history of Impressionism is rewritten in another hundred years, Pissarro's paintings of 1872 and 1873 will be considered his masterpieces, as great, in their way, as Corot's work from his first trips to Italy or Monet's landscapes from the late 1860s... The style of the classic Pontoise period shows a balance between construction and sensation that Pissarro never again achieved... In returning from Louveciennes and its restricted imagery to Pontoise, Pissarro had returned to his own landscape, rejecting implicitly the kind of landscape world endorsed by Monet and Renoir for the more bracing 'realities' of his own. His style, although technically unchanged since the Louveciennes and Upper Norwood days, broadened somewhat. His palette became lighter and brighter... His execution became more confident and unproblematic without losing its fundamentally geometric quality. What Pissarro did in his paintings of this period was to revel in the sheer variety of the site (R. Brettell, op. cit., pp. 151, 153, and 160).
In a related vein, Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel have commented:
Stylistically, the first half of the 1870s is perhaps Pissarro's best known creative period, and the canvases painted in England and shortly afterwards in France have been more readily appreciated than those painted at any other time in his whole career. The artist retains a firmly controlled geometric structure as the framework for his compositions, but he employs a lighter touch in his brushwork and a brighter palette, both of which show the influence of Monet, whose technique of freely applying broken, separate patches of pure pigment Pissarro approached closely at this time. The paintings dating from the opening years of the 1870s therefore may, like those of Monet and Renoir, with good reason be described as the most purely impressionist in Pissarro's entire oeuvre (C. Lloyd and A. Distel, Pissarro, Hayward Gallery, exh. cat., London, 1980-1981, p. 79).
Although Pissarro is reported to have lacked confidence in his work at this time, his doubts were not shared by his friends and colleagues. As Antoine Guillemet wrote to Pissarro at Pontoise:
I have done the rue Lafitte and have visited the galleries, including Durand-Ruel's. What I wanted to say is that everywhere I saw charming and really perfect things of yours and that I felt anxious to tell you this immediately... Thus I saw especially at Durand-Ruel bright and lively pictures, varied in a word, which gave me the greatest pleasure (quoted in K. Adler, Camille Pissarro: A Biography, London, 1978, p. 51).
In the summer of 1872, Pissarro was joined in Pontoise by Cézanne, nine years his junior. During the next decade, the two artists executed at least twenty paintings side-by-side in Pontoise, Auvers, and the environs, and also made eight portraits of one another. A view of Auvers that Cézanne made in 1872-1873 (fig. 3) depicts a scene very similar to the present picture: a curving path bordered by small, steep-roofed cottages. The influence of Pissarro is evident in the light, varied palette and fleet, vibratory touch of Cézanne's townscape--a striking contrast to the dark tonalities and rough facture which had dominated the younger artist's work in the previous decade. Cézanne himself repeatedly acknowledged his artistic debt to Pissarro. As late as the 1900s, he listed himself in an exhibition catalogue as "Paul Cézanne, pupil of Pissarro;" he described Monet and Pissarro as "the two great masters, the only two," and elsewhere wrote, "As for old Pissarro, he was a father to me; someone to turn to for advice, somebody like the good Lord Himself" (quoted in B.E. White, op. cit., p. 109). Pissarro, in turn, was a staunch supporter of Cézanne's work. He invited Cézanne to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, and by the time of his death owned more than forty of Cézanne's works; in a letter to his son Lucien in 1896, Pissarro recalled, "For thirty years [I] defended him with so much energy and conviction!" (quoted in ibid., p. 109).
In 1890, nearly two decades after Pissarro and Cézanne had worked at Auvers, Van Gogh selected a comparable view of the town to paint, possibly even the same street (fig. 4).
(fig.1) Camille Pissarro, La route de Gisors à Pontoise, effet de neige, 1873, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
(fig. 2) Camille Pissarro, L'Oise aux environs de Pontoise, 1873,
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
(fig. 3) Paul Cézanne, La vieille route à Auvers-sur-Oise, 1872-1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 4) Vincent van Gogh, Rue de village, 1890, Ateneumin Taidemuseo, Helsinki.