Les coteaux de Thierceville

With the domestic French landscape as its subject, the present work reflects the simple poetic charms which had become the focus of Pissarro's paintings since the mid-1860s. Executed in 1889-90, at a time when Pissarro was working upon his Paris series, the present work incorporates the qualities of his bright Eragny landscapes of the late 1880s. Though the artist was living in a small apartment on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, he could not remain separated from his beloved countryside. Accompanied by his family, he often travelled to Eragny-sur-Epte and its surroundings, seeking out rural motifs through which to capture the transcience of nature. Fired by the magnitude and the beauty of the subject, Pissarro continued to work, until his death in 1903, towards the creation of works in which his observation of nature directly commands his hand.