Effet de neige à Montfoucault

Effet de neige à Montfoucault is an exquisite piece painted by Camille Pissarro at the height of his artistic career when he harnessed his Impressionist style to explore the effects of various weather conditions and their respective lighting on rural landscapes. The estate of Montfoucault in Mayenne, Britanny, belonged to Pissarro’s friend and fellow painter Ludovic Piette-Montfoucault. Pissarro first visited this village in the 1860s, returning to this location as the stimulus for a series of works executed a decade later in the winter of 1874-75. Rural French landscapes, and more specifically winter scenes, were a true source of inspiration for the artist; Pissarro created at least nine niveous compositions during this concentrated period, exploring the effect of the winter light cast onto the glimmering surface of fresh snowfall. The crisp air of the season is palpable here in the myriad of blues and shades of greys and beiges throughout the piece, inviting the viewer into the Impressionist realm of atmospheric and scintillating brushstrokes.

The artist embarked upon a series of works depicting the vicinity of Montfoucault, capturing the village through the changing seasons and rendering the tranquillity of the French provinces in contrast to the exhilarating and dizzying growth of the Parisian metropolis. Here the artist has skilfully captured a crisp winter’s day, with a fresh layer of snow softly resting on the rooftops of the estate’s outbuildings and laying gently on the ground. Pissarro’s characteristically rapid Impressionist brushstrokes, loaded with impasto upon the canvas surface, create resonances of flecked patterns throughout the composition, notably in the stones glimpsed through the snow and in the stonework of the building to the right. We encounter two figures, presumably a local paysanne and her child walking through this scene, looking at one another as though conversing, wrapped in layers to enjoy a stroll outside. A work painted the same year, La Maison de Piette à Montfoucault, effet de neige, similarly portrays two figures towards the centre of the composition, here in the act of rural labour as a man carries a pile of hay facing a woman. This dialogue between the two figures, both verbal and physical, creates a compelling invitation into the scene much like in Effet de neige.

The elongated trunk of the dominant tree in the foreground of Effet de neige à Montfoucault rises above the edge of the canvas, expanding the horizon of the landscape and throwing the rest of the composition into relief. Through a mixture of subtle greys, greens and blues, Pissarro renders the wintry light of the countryside beneath a faintly pink, hazy sky. A network of entangled, rapid brushstrokes depict the bare tree branches of winter. The two smaller trees on either side arch inwards towards the centre, their frozen branches guiding the viewer’s gaze down a central path that bends past a wooden shed. Pissarro’s signature seems to rest upon this layer of snow in the lower left corner, his paintbrush having gently brushed against the canvas surface.

The trio of trees in Effet de neige is mirrored in Maison de Piette à Montfoucault, effet de neige, another work that captures the farm estate in the midst of winter. Housed in The Fitzwilliam Museum art collection in Cambridge, this image is devoid of human figures, giving primordial importance to arborescent imagery through the distorted, jagged trees. A path emerges through the thick layer of snow, echoing the path on which the figures walk in Effet de neige. Pissarro creates visual resonances and compositional echoes across his works, guiding us down these alluring paths and piquing our curiosity as to the continuing landscape therein. The artist also painted the rural landscapes of Eragny, Louveciennes and the Vallée de l’Oise among others, portraying the stillness of rural paysages and drawing attention to the liberating shift that Impressionist painters made towards en plein air painting.

The year 1874 was the first time that the Société Anonyme des artistes peintres held its own Impressionist exhibition, marking a key moment in history when artists such as Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas broke away from the constraints of the traditional model of the Academy. The creation of Effet de neige is thus the product of the very conception of Impressionist thinking, connected to a vital moment both in the artist’s career and in the wider history of art.