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Lot Essay
Pissarro painted this landscape under a heavy frost in late 1892. It is one of a group of six canvases that depict the coming of winter to the environs of the artist's home in Eragny (see Cat. critique, nos. 965 and 967-970); the other paintings also show local scenes under hoar-frost and finally a coating of snow. The view here is a familiar one in the artist's work; it is that which Pissarro could see from the second-floor window of his house, looking beyond his barn and garden to the meadows between Eragny and the nearby town of Bazincourt. There are short, scattered apple trees--Pissarro was fond of depicting the bent and twisted shapes of those in the foreground--and part of a row of tall poplars are visible at the left side. The more distant trees, willows and poplars, now faded white and nearly blending with the bright but overcast sky, trace the course of the Epte River. Among these distant groves one can see the steeple of the church in Bazincourt.
Pissarro was engaged during this time in negotiations with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who had mounted a highly successful retrospective of the artist's work the in January-February 1892, and was buying his paintings once again. Reviewing this exhibition, the novelist and critic Octave Mirbeau wrote, "I know of nothing more beautiful and touching than to see M. Camille Pissarro, so youthful in spite of his white beard, preserving all the enthusiasm of youth, and far from the clamour of coteries, juries, and hideous jealousies, pursuing, with the ardours of old, one of the most beautiful and notable bodies of work of our time" (quoted in the Cat. critique, vol. I, p. 232-233). Pissarro now had no difficulty in selling his work, and he was pleased to see dealers even competing to buy and show his pictures. Durand-Ruel visited Pissarro in Eragny in November and admired the artist's recent canvases. Early in the following month the dealer purchased twenty canvases and gouaches, including three of the snow scenes (nos. 967, 969 and 970). He bought the present painting from Pissarro in March 1893. With the loan of the remaining two snowy landscapes, Durand-Ruel was able to show the entire group of six, together with 40 other recent paintings, in Pissarro's second solo exhibition in his gallery, which ran from 15 to 30 March 1893. The critic Gustave Geffroy wrote in review, "Camille Pissarro's art is infinitely fine. There is a poet inseparable from the skilled painter, and the result is not a cold demonstration, but a luminous résumé of appearances of things and of short-lived phenomena, magnificently set down once and for all" (quoted in ibid., pp. 240-241).
Pissarro was engaged during this time in negotiations with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who had mounted a highly successful retrospective of the artist's work the in January-February 1892, and was buying his paintings once again. Reviewing this exhibition, the novelist and critic Octave Mirbeau wrote, "I know of nothing more beautiful and touching than to see M. Camille Pissarro, so youthful in spite of his white beard, preserving all the enthusiasm of youth, and far from the clamour of coteries, juries, and hideous jealousies, pursuing, with the ardours of old, one of the most beautiful and notable bodies of work of our time" (quoted in the Cat. critique, vol. I, p. 232-233). Pissarro now had no difficulty in selling his work, and he was pleased to see dealers even competing to buy and show his pictures. Durand-Ruel visited Pissarro in Eragny in November and admired the artist's recent canvases. Early in the following month the dealer purchased twenty canvases and gouaches, including three of the snow scenes (nos. 967, 969 and 970). He bought the present painting from Pissarro in March 1893. With the loan of the remaining two snowy landscapes, Durand-Ruel was able to show the entire group of six, together with 40 other recent paintings, in Pissarro's second solo exhibition in his gallery, which ran from 15 to 30 March 1893. The critic Gustave Geffroy wrote in review, "Camille Pissarro's art is infinitely fine. There is a poet inseparable from the skilled painter, and the result is not a cold demonstration, but a luminous résumé of appearances of things and of short-lived phenomena, magnificently set down once and for all" (quoted in ibid., pp. 240-241).