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Lot Essay
Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts will include this painting in their forthcoming Pissarro catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
Pissarro lived in Pontoise intermittently between 1866 and 1882, thereby establishing a close connection between himself and this small provincial town, which is located 20 miles northwest of Paris. Pontoise was an ideal setting for his painting. It offered an unfamiliar landscape, in contrast to the well-known Fountainebleu Forest and the Normandy coast, which numerous landscape painters had frequently portrayed during the mid-19th century.
The choice of Pontoise as a site marked a desire for the artist to distinguish himself from his predecessors. The artist had explored many views of the town's environs and even finished certain scenes by combining favorite motifs drawn from architecture and the towns surrounding countryside. By the late 1870s, Pissarro began moving away from panoramic scenes towards tighter, abstracted compositions with a brighter palette, as seen in the present work.
Pissarro lived in Pontoise intermittently between 1866 and 1882, thereby establishing a close connection between himself and this small provincial town, which is located 20 miles northwest of Paris. Pontoise was an ideal setting for his painting. It offered an unfamiliar landscape, in contrast to the well-known Fountainebleu Forest and the Normandy coast, which numerous landscape painters had frequently portrayed during the mid-19th century.
The choice of Pontoise as a site marked a desire for the artist to distinguish himself from his predecessors. The artist had explored many views of the town's environs and even finished certain scenes by combining favorite motifs drawn from architecture and the towns surrounding countryside. By the late 1870s, Pissarro began moving away from panoramic scenes towards tighter, abstracted compositions with a brighter palette, as seen in the present work.