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Lot Essay
Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts will include this work in their forthcoming Pissarro catalogue critique being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
During the 1870s, the first decade of Impressionism, most of the artists in this group included figures as an integral component in their larger landscape compositions. While incidental to the scene, like a passersby captured in the moment, figures served to remind the viewer of the human scale of the artist's conception, and reflected a gentle equilibrium between human society and its natural environment.
In the early 1880s, Claude Monet began to eliminate figures from his landscapes while at the same time Pissarro began to make the figure the focus of his paintings. Pissarro contributed thirty pictures to the seventh Impressionist exhibition of 1882; most of them showed his new preoccupation with the figure.
As Christopher Lloyd states, Pissarro's "landscape drawings are often reduced to formulas, whilst there is a proliferation of powerful figure studies made from life and from posed models. In these studies Pissarro explores a variety of postures and activities. The rhythmical outlines, frequently redrawn, evince his obvious pleasure in the rounded forms of the human figure" (in Pissarro, New York, 1981, p. 94).
During the 1870s, the first decade of Impressionism, most of the artists in this group included figures as an integral component in their larger landscape compositions. While incidental to the scene, like a passersby captured in the moment, figures served to remind the viewer of the human scale of the artist's conception, and reflected a gentle equilibrium between human society and its natural environment.
In the early 1880s, Claude Monet began to eliminate figures from his landscapes while at the same time Pissarro began to make the figure the focus of his paintings. Pissarro contributed thirty pictures to the seventh Impressionist exhibition of 1882; most of them showed his new preoccupation with the figure.
As Christopher Lloyd states, Pissarro's "landscape drawings are often reduced to formulas, whilst there is a proliferation of powerful figure studies made from life and from posed models. In these studies Pissarro explores a variety of postures and activities. The rhythmical outlines, frequently redrawn, evince his obvious pleasure in the rounded forms of the human figure" (in Pissarro, New York, 1981, p. 94).