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Lot Essay
Dating from the peak of the impressionist movement, La sente des Pouilleux, Pontoise exemplifies the distinctive style, subject matter and compositional motifs that have come to define Camille Pissarro’s pioneering form of Impressionism. Painted in 1878, La sente des Pouilleux, Pontoise was included in the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition held the following year. At around the time of the exhibition, the painting was bought by the novelist and pastry chef Eugène Murer, who supported Pissarro and the nascent Impressionist group by buying their works and hanging them in his home and restaurant, promoting them to his regular guests. Following this, La sente des Pouilleux, Pontoise entered into the collection of another important impressionist patron, Dr Georges Viau, a dentist who amassed a number of works by many of the leading artists of this group.
Depicting a rustic farmhouse seen through a veil of ascendant trees, La sente des Pouilleux, Pontoise presents a quotidian, rural scene of Pontoise, the small rural town in the Île de France where Pissarro was living at this time. The specific location of the title – Les Pouilleux – appears in two other oils (Pissarro & Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, nos. 328 & 666), however this exact site has never been identified. Like Cézanne and Aix, or Monet and Argenteuil, Pissarro’s name is now inseparable from Pontoise. He painted the countryside here with a constant enthusiasm; indeed perhaps no other painter depicted one locale as much as Pissarro portrayed Pontoise. The bank of trees that cover the width of the composition partially obscure the houses behind, simultaneously concealing and revealing the subject of the painting. This compositional device was one of Pissarro’s favourites and appears frequently in his work of the late 1870s, allowing him to create landscapes with often unusual viewpoints or unexpected perspectives, such as the present work.
Depicting a rustic farmhouse seen through a veil of ascendant trees, La sente des Pouilleux, Pontoise presents a quotidian, rural scene of Pontoise, the small rural town in the Île de France where Pissarro was living at this time. The specific location of the title – Les Pouilleux – appears in two other oils (Pissarro & Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, nos. 328 & 666), however this exact site has never been identified. Like Cézanne and Aix, or Monet and Argenteuil, Pissarro’s name is now inseparable from Pontoise. He painted the countryside here with a constant enthusiasm; indeed perhaps no other painter depicted one locale as much as Pissarro portrayed Pontoise. The bank of trees that cover the width of the composition partially obscure the houses behind, simultaneously concealing and revealing the subject of the painting. This compositional device was one of Pissarro’s favourites and appears frequently in his work of the late 1870s, allowing him to create landscapes with often unusual viewpoints or unexpected perspectives, such as the present work.