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Lot Essay
During the summer of 1899, Pissarro had spent some time and no little energy seeking a suitable spot that would provide him with a place to stay and ample subject-matter to paint. He was looking further and further from Paris, with its encroaching industrialism, and sought instead somewhere less spoilt. Through the advice of the painter Jacinthe Pozier, he happened upon the town of Varengeville near Dieppe, where he arrived in September of that year. There, he soon installed a large section of his family in a local inn. During the time that he spent there-- roughly a month and a half-- he painted eight canvases (P& D-RS 1286 to 1293), of which six, including Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant, were of the areas surrounding the manor-house of Ango. There, he found a rich mixture of scenery, of buildings scattered within the greenery of the estate, which provided him with plenty of material to paint, allowing him to combine nature, humanity and the overarching sky in a small group of enchanting paintings.
Describing Varengeville, Pissarro's enthusiasm for the place was unmistakable in a letter written to his son Georges: 'I've taken up quarters at Varengeville, a pretty village thirty minutes from the sea, a wooded countryside abounding in motifs, shadowy roads, a landscapist's country, rather well-fed, plenty of milk' (Pissarro, quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Camille Pissarro: Catalogue critique des peintures, Vol. III, Paris, 2005, p. 797). In Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant, the qualities he was celebrating are combined with the intimacy of the countryside that he found so fascinating there to provide the sense of a painting of a bucolic nook, a well-kept garden that implies well-fed people, let alone the landscape.
Pissarro's sensitivity to the romance of this scene may have been heightened by the history of the Manoir, which had originally been built by the sixteenth-century ship-owner and privateer, Jehan Ango, and which remains a cherished monument to this day. Ango had a full life, serving as governor of Dieppe, organising the construction of modern harbours in various ports in France, serving as a friend and counsellor to the king, François I, and as a great sponsor of the explorations of the time. Indeed, it was in one of Ango's ships that Giovanni Verrazano discovered the site of what would eventually become New York.
The house was built in 1540, at the height of Ango's wealth and influence, as is clear in its style, and it is therefore telling that Pissarro shunned the main building as a subject, choosing instead the more humble potager and its associated outbuildings. Even in these, the intricate brickwork that marks the manor itself is reflected in smaller scale in the building to the right of the canvas, allowing Pissarro to explore a scene that presents a strange combination of the luxurious and the peasant. The woman shown in the picture is clearly a worker, not a visitor, heightening the sense of grounded reality, of Pissarro having discovered a scene that features beauty and a deep-rooted honesty. Of Pissarro's other paintings of the grounds around the manor of Ango, two others show the same potager, one from a greatly different angle, the other as though, after painting the present work, he had merely turned a little to the left (these are P&S 1186 and 1188, the latter now in the Phoenix Art Museum). It is clear that the cottages and the abundance of greenery interested the artist more than the venerable manor itself. Because of this, Duret's words from two decades earlier, in which he vigorously defended Pissarro's work, remain apt to the present picture:
'Never before has anyone dared to portray so systematically the simple forms of nature, the countryside, the appearance of the fields. Visitors imagined there was something undignified about it. In their opinion art ought to raise itself above ordinary life, floating somewhere in the highest realms, and Pissarro, who had eyes to see the country as it really was, seemed like the consummate peasant to them' (Duret, quoted in W. Eiermann, 'Camille Pissarro 1830-1903: An Artist's Life', pp. 1-34 in C. Becker, Camille Pissarro, Ostfildern, 1999, p. 16).
The brushwork in Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant tells a tale of the recent events, associations and developments in the world of Impressionism. For here we see the speckled brushstrokes that lend such life to his paintings while also allowing intense, sharp interactions between the colours. Here, these brushstrokes show a return to a more Impressionistic manner after the years during which he explored-- to the detriment of his eyesight-- the potential of Neo-Impressionistic Pointillisme. In the incredible manipulation and build-up of colours evident in Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant, it is clear that he has retained some of the lessons that he learnt from Neo-Impressionism, but has actively rejected the almost scientific manner that their artistic concepts had introduced, the static and over-clinical appearance of the Pointillist pictures. Instead, there is an activity and movement in the brushwork that pushes the colours to the fore while also filling the picture with a sense of buzzing life.
These developments had been recognised by both critics and advocates of Pissarro earlier in the year, not least Félicien Fagus in La Revue Blanche: 'Camille Pissarro has drunk light: with it he waters the sky, the earth, the grass and the peasant woman... [it is what gives] his work its unquenchable shimmer' (Pissarro, quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Catalogue critique des peintures, Vol. I, Paris, 2005, pp. 288-89).
Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant was formerly in the collection of Comte Arnaud Doria, a writer and benefactor of the arts and also a member of the same family as Comte Armand Doria, who had owned several works by Pissarro and whose collection, largely dispersed after his death in 1896, was considered to chart the developments of art, and in particular Impressionism, during the second half of the Nineteenth Century.
Describing Varengeville, Pissarro's enthusiasm for the place was unmistakable in a letter written to his son Georges: 'I've taken up quarters at Varengeville, a pretty village thirty minutes from the sea, a wooded countryside abounding in motifs, shadowy roads, a landscapist's country, rather well-fed, plenty of milk' (Pissarro, quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Camille Pissarro: Catalogue critique des peintures, Vol. III, Paris, 2005, p. 797). In Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant, the qualities he was celebrating are combined with the intimacy of the countryside that he found so fascinating there to provide the sense of a painting of a bucolic nook, a well-kept garden that implies well-fed people, let alone the landscape.
Pissarro's sensitivity to the romance of this scene may have been heightened by the history of the Manoir, which had originally been built by the sixteenth-century ship-owner and privateer, Jehan Ango, and which remains a cherished monument to this day. Ango had a full life, serving as governor of Dieppe, organising the construction of modern harbours in various ports in France, serving as a friend and counsellor to the king, François I, and as a great sponsor of the explorations of the time. Indeed, it was in one of Ango's ships that Giovanni Verrazano discovered the site of what would eventually become New York.
The house was built in 1540, at the height of Ango's wealth and influence, as is clear in its style, and it is therefore telling that Pissarro shunned the main building as a subject, choosing instead the more humble potager and its associated outbuildings. Even in these, the intricate brickwork that marks the manor itself is reflected in smaller scale in the building to the right of the canvas, allowing Pissarro to explore a scene that presents a strange combination of the luxurious and the peasant. The woman shown in the picture is clearly a worker, not a visitor, heightening the sense of grounded reality, of Pissarro having discovered a scene that features beauty and a deep-rooted honesty. Of Pissarro's other paintings of the grounds around the manor of Ango, two others show the same potager, one from a greatly different angle, the other as though, after painting the present work, he had merely turned a little to the left (these are P&S 1186 and 1188, the latter now in the Phoenix Art Museum). It is clear that the cottages and the abundance of greenery interested the artist more than the venerable manor itself. Because of this, Duret's words from two decades earlier, in which he vigorously defended Pissarro's work, remain apt to the present picture:
'Never before has anyone dared to portray so systematically the simple forms of nature, the countryside, the appearance of the fields. Visitors imagined there was something undignified about it. In their opinion art ought to raise itself above ordinary life, floating somewhere in the highest realms, and Pissarro, who had eyes to see the country as it really was, seemed like the consummate peasant to them' (Duret, quoted in W. Eiermann, 'Camille Pissarro 1830-1903: An Artist's Life', pp. 1-34 in C. Becker, Camille Pissarro, Ostfildern, 1999, p. 16).
The brushwork in Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant tells a tale of the recent events, associations and developments in the world of Impressionism. For here we see the speckled brushstrokes that lend such life to his paintings while also allowing intense, sharp interactions between the colours. Here, these brushstrokes show a return to a more Impressionistic manner after the years during which he explored-- to the detriment of his eyesight-- the potential of Neo-Impressionistic Pointillisme. In the incredible manipulation and build-up of colours evident in Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant, it is clear that he has retained some of the lessons that he learnt from Neo-Impressionism, but has actively rejected the almost scientific manner that their artistic concepts had introduced, the static and over-clinical appearance of the Pointillist pictures. Instead, there is an activity and movement in the brushwork that pushes the colours to the fore while also filling the picture with a sense of buzzing life.
These developments had been recognised by both critics and advocates of Pissarro earlier in the year, not least Félicien Fagus in La Revue Blanche: 'Camille Pissarro has drunk light: with it he waters the sky, the earth, the grass and the peasant woman... [it is what gives] his work its unquenchable shimmer' (Pissarro, quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Catalogue critique des peintures, Vol. I, Paris, 2005, pp. 288-89).
Le potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant was formerly in the collection of Comte Arnaud Doria, a writer and benefactor of the arts and also a member of the same family as Comte Armand Doria, who had owned several works by Pissarro and whose collection, largely dispersed after his death in 1896, was considered to chart the developments of art, and in particular Impressionism, during the second half of the Nineteenth Century.