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Lot Essay
Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts and Joachim Pissarro will include this painting in the forthcoming Pissarro catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
In 1884 Pissarro relocated to Eragny which was a rural hamlet of small farms that were still being managed in much the same way as they had been for centuries. The agrarian setting appealed to Pissarro and in his paintings from Eragny there is an increased focus on the theme of the peasant. As Richard Thompson notes, "In his world the peasant was not the heroic figure...but an individual with as much dignity and poise" (Camille Pissarro, London, 1990, p. 58). Le labour à Eragny portrays a farmer behind his oxen-drawn plow, cutting furrows in his field. The scene is rendered in the pointilist (or divisionist) technique that Pissarro had first seen in the work of Seurat and Signac whom he met in 1885 at Guillaumin's studio. He saw their radical new way of painting as a natural extension of his Impressionist approach and Le labour à Eragny is one of a number of works he painted in this new "Neo-Impressionist" manner. Central to his new way of painting was the construction of pictorial elements by placing tiny strokes of pure pigments side by side. When Pissarro showed these paintings, they caused a sensation. Critics of the new style label it "anarchist", and his dealer Durand-Ruel was skeptical that they would find commercial appeal. Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Caillebotte broke irreparably with him. Le labour à Eragny was painted circa 1886 at the height of this debate.
Please note this painting has been requested for the travelling exhibition Georges Seurat and the Neo-Impressionism to be held between June-December 2002, organized by APT International with the collaboration of Yomiuri Shinbun.
In 1884 Pissarro relocated to Eragny which was a rural hamlet of small farms that were still being managed in much the same way as they had been for centuries. The agrarian setting appealed to Pissarro and in his paintings from Eragny there is an increased focus on the theme of the peasant. As Richard Thompson notes, "In his world the peasant was not the heroic figure...but an individual with as much dignity and poise" (Camille Pissarro, London, 1990, p. 58). Le labour à Eragny portrays a farmer behind his oxen-drawn plow, cutting furrows in his field. The scene is rendered in the pointilist (or divisionist) technique that Pissarro had first seen in the work of Seurat and Signac whom he met in 1885 at Guillaumin's studio. He saw their radical new way of painting as a natural extension of his Impressionist approach and Le labour à Eragny is one of a number of works he painted in this new "Neo-Impressionist" manner. Central to his new way of painting was the construction of pictorial elements by placing tiny strokes of pure pigments side by side. When Pissarro showed these paintings, they caused a sensation. Critics of the new style label it "anarchist", and his dealer Durand-Ruel was skeptical that they would find commercial appeal. Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Caillebotte broke irreparably with him. Le labour à Eragny was painted circa 1886 at the height of this debate.
Please note this painting has been requested for the travelling exhibition Georges Seurat and the Neo-Impressionism to be held between June-December 2002, organized by APT International with the collaboration of Yomiuri Shinbun.