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Lot Essay
Emanating the subdued warmth of an autumnal morning, Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny celebrates the transcendent pictorial quality of the interaction between landscape and light. The work belongs to Camille Pissarro’s expansive series of paintings seeking to capture and celebrate the bucolic land which stretched from his property at Eragny-sur-Epte, a tiny village situated two hours north of Paris by train. The present work demonstrates the artist’s earnest sensibility for the charm and beauty of his provincial home, capturing the essence of the countryside on a richly textured surface with subtle luminosity.
The Pissarro family moved to the diminutive hamlet of Eragny in 1884, and the artist was instantly enamored with the area’s rural tranquility and the wellspring of inspiration it provided, describing the open, broad countryside as “a marvel compared to everything else I see” (quoted in J. Pissarro and C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., 2005, vol. 1, p. 89). Pissarro remained in the village until his death in 1903, and in the nearly two decades he resided there, produced hundreds of oils, watercolors, and drawings reverently depicting the gardens, orchards, and fields surrounding his home with singular dedication. Alongside the works produced at Pontoise between 1866 and 1882, Pissarro’s depictions of Eragny constitute his largest and most significant body of work within the landscape genre. He diligently recorded the fleeting changes in the light and atmosphere of the verdant scenery through all seasons and times of day, frequently describing the weather and light conditions in painstaking details in letters to his son, Lucien. Pissarro’s Eragny has been likened to Monet’s Giverny, a rural homestead in the Ile-de-France which the latter immortalized across iconic canvases. Whereas Monet transformed his land into a garden resplendent with exotic flowers and plants, Pissarro chose to leave his farm as is, painting its Arcadian landscape of lush apple trees, poplars, and fertile fields. Indeed, in an interview in 1892, Pissarro spoke of his wish to express through his canvases “the true poem of the countryside” (quoted in R. Thomson, Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape and Rural Labour, London, 1990, p. 81).
Composed of densely applied dabs of paint, the work exemplifies the uninhibited technique Pissarro achieved in the final years of his prodigious career. As in the late style of many formidable masters such as Titian and Rembrandt before him, Pissarro’s later work exhibits a bold determination to eschew the laborious complexity of his earlier works in favor of a more directly expressive approach. Indeed, in earlier works such as Vue de ma fenêtre, Eragny, the artist had followed a stricter methodology inspired by the works of Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, whose artistic lead moved Pissarro to abandon the more intuitive approach of Impressionism in favor of experimenting with the rigorous color theory of Pointillism. With a then-newly gleaned procedural approach to his paintings, Pissarro dispensed with en plein air painting in favor of working within his studio, filtering his knowledge and first-hand experience of nature through a systematic view of light and color. Following the death of Seurat in 1891, Pissarro’s involvement with Neo-Impressionism subsided, and his technique was freed of its methodological limitations. In the last decade of his life, in an effort to reclaim a facet of immediacy in his response to the ever-changing conditions of a particular place, Pissarro imbued his paintings with envigored spontaneity. Unlike the more standardized brushstrokes of his Neo-Impressionist canvases, in Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny the paint application ranges from rich impasto, to feathered brushstrokes, to smaller, dainty and lively dabs of paint, resulting in a richly engaging abundance of textures.
One of the most consequential effects of Pissarro’s detachment from Pointillism had been his gradual return to nature. Drawing from his life-long observance of nature to produce evocative paintings such as Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny, the artist once more immersed himself in the natural world, exploring the ephemerality of light and the role of time on the well-trodden land. As he resumed working outdoors, he once more became preoccupied with the shifting changing effects of light throughout the day, and by his surrounding’s response to these transmutations. The precise nature of the work’s title is reflective of Pissarro’s preoccupation with questions of time: the seasonal, climactic, and temporal conditions are carefully noted and recorded, as though the artist seeks to stress the singularity of the fleeting moment captured in oil paint. This idea that a painting must reflect a singular moment was central to Pissarro’s concept of Impressionism—when the young Henri Matisse posed the question “What is an Impressionist?” the artist replied: “An Impressionist is a painter who never makes the same painting twice” (quoted in R. Shikes and P. Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 311). In their atmospheric subtlety, works such as the present painting convey Pissarro’s understanding of the volatile, changeable appearance of nature. The artist explained: “…there is spring, summer, autumn, winter, air, light. Harmonies, admirable and infinite subtleties in nature. The whole thing is to pay close heed to them” (quoted in Camille Pissarro: Impressionist Innovator, exh. cat., Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1994, p. 172).
Pissarro was unabashed in his preference for his natural landscapes over atmospheric views of modern cities and harbors. Commenting on an exhibition which took place at the Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie. in January 1901, in which the present work was included, Pissarro wrote to Lucien: "Today my show opens at Durand-Ruel’s: forty-two canvases. The paintings of Eragny seem to me better than those of Paris and of Rouen" (J. Rewald, ed., Camille Pissarro: Letters to His Son Lucien, London, 1980, p. 345). Bathed in a golden light, Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny celebrates Pissarro’s ultimate return to nature, in a wonderfully evocative example of the resolute spontaneity of the master’s late style.
The Pissarro family moved to the diminutive hamlet of Eragny in 1884, and the artist was instantly enamored with the area’s rural tranquility and the wellspring of inspiration it provided, describing the open, broad countryside as “a marvel compared to everything else I see” (quoted in J. Pissarro and C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., 2005, vol. 1, p. 89). Pissarro remained in the village until his death in 1903, and in the nearly two decades he resided there, produced hundreds of oils, watercolors, and drawings reverently depicting the gardens, orchards, and fields surrounding his home with singular dedication. Alongside the works produced at Pontoise between 1866 and 1882, Pissarro’s depictions of Eragny constitute his largest and most significant body of work within the landscape genre. He diligently recorded the fleeting changes in the light and atmosphere of the verdant scenery through all seasons and times of day, frequently describing the weather and light conditions in painstaking details in letters to his son, Lucien. Pissarro’s Eragny has been likened to Monet’s Giverny, a rural homestead in the Ile-de-France which the latter immortalized across iconic canvases. Whereas Monet transformed his land into a garden resplendent with exotic flowers and plants, Pissarro chose to leave his farm as is, painting its Arcadian landscape of lush apple trees, poplars, and fertile fields. Indeed, in an interview in 1892, Pissarro spoke of his wish to express through his canvases “the true poem of the countryside” (quoted in R. Thomson, Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape and Rural Labour, London, 1990, p. 81).
Composed of densely applied dabs of paint, the work exemplifies the uninhibited technique Pissarro achieved in the final years of his prodigious career. As in the late style of many formidable masters such as Titian and Rembrandt before him, Pissarro’s later work exhibits a bold determination to eschew the laborious complexity of his earlier works in favor of a more directly expressive approach. Indeed, in earlier works such as Vue de ma fenêtre, Eragny, the artist had followed a stricter methodology inspired by the works of Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, whose artistic lead moved Pissarro to abandon the more intuitive approach of Impressionism in favor of experimenting with the rigorous color theory of Pointillism. With a then-newly gleaned procedural approach to his paintings, Pissarro dispensed with en plein air painting in favor of working within his studio, filtering his knowledge and first-hand experience of nature through a systematic view of light and color. Following the death of Seurat in 1891, Pissarro’s involvement with Neo-Impressionism subsided, and his technique was freed of its methodological limitations. In the last decade of his life, in an effort to reclaim a facet of immediacy in his response to the ever-changing conditions of a particular place, Pissarro imbued his paintings with envigored spontaneity. Unlike the more standardized brushstrokes of his Neo-Impressionist canvases, in Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny the paint application ranges from rich impasto, to feathered brushstrokes, to smaller, dainty and lively dabs of paint, resulting in a richly engaging abundance of textures.
One of the most consequential effects of Pissarro’s detachment from Pointillism had been his gradual return to nature. Drawing from his life-long observance of nature to produce evocative paintings such as Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny, the artist once more immersed himself in the natural world, exploring the ephemerality of light and the role of time on the well-trodden land. As he resumed working outdoors, he once more became preoccupied with the shifting changing effects of light throughout the day, and by his surrounding’s response to these transmutations. The precise nature of the work’s title is reflective of Pissarro’s preoccupation with questions of time: the seasonal, climactic, and temporal conditions are carefully noted and recorded, as though the artist seeks to stress the singularity of the fleeting moment captured in oil paint. This idea that a painting must reflect a singular moment was central to Pissarro’s concept of Impressionism—when the young Henri Matisse posed the question “What is an Impressionist?” the artist replied: “An Impressionist is a painter who never makes the same painting twice” (quoted in R. Shikes and P. Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 311). In their atmospheric subtlety, works such as the present painting convey Pissarro’s understanding of the volatile, changeable appearance of nature. The artist explained: “…there is spring, summer, autumn, winter, air, light. Harmonies, admirable and infinite subtleties in nature. The whole thing is to pay close heed to them” (quoted in Camille Pissarro: Impressionist Innovator, exh. cat., Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1994, p. 172).
Pissarro was unabashed in his preference for his natural landscapes over atmospheric views of modern cities and harbors. Commenting on an exhibition which took place at the Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie. in January 1901, in which the present work was included, Pissarro wrote to Lucien: "Today my show opens at Durand-Ruel’s: forty-two canvases. The paintings of Eragny seem to me better than those of Paris and of Rouen" (J. Rewald, ed., Camille Pissarro: Letters to His Son Lucien, London, 1980, p. 345). Bathed in a golden light, Matin, soleil d'automne à Eragny celebrates Pissarro’s ultimate return to nature, in a wonderfully evocative example of the resolute spontaneity of the master’s late style.