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Lot Essay
Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts will include this drawing in the forthcoming Pissarro catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
Pissarro presented this work as a gift to his doctor, Dr George de Bellio. De Bellio was a Romanian homeopathic physician and a loyal collector of works by the Impressionists. On occasion he made timely purchases of works by Pissarro as well as providing free medicine and advice. These purchases were critically valuable to Pissarro since by the end of the 1880s his family was virtually penniless. Pissarro's sixth child was born in November of 1878, a few months after the death of Piette, their friend and benefactor in Montfoucault. Pissarro expressed his general despair in a note to the critic Théodore Duret "So you see business is dreadful. Soon I shall be old, my eyesight will be failing, and I shall be no better off than I was twenty years ago" (quoted in R.E. Shikes and P. Harper, Pissarro his Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 144).
As the fourth Impressionist exhibition approached in 1879 other Impressionist artists were feeling similar financial pressures. The art market was swamped with landscapes and with a certain shrewdness Pissarro turned to figurative and genre pieces. Le Père Melon allumant sa pipe is an excellent example of the work of this period. Duret had advised Pissarro to hire models and to put more emphasis on the human figure in his paintings. In response Pissarro replied "I have always thought about painting, as you advise me to do....the thing is to find a suitable person in the proper character who would be willing to pose". Presumably, Le Père Melon was exactly such a character because he is a recurring subject in Pissarro's works of 1880.
The present drawing was originally executed by Pissarro circa 1879-1880. There are areas of re-touching by another hand.
Pissarro presented this work as a gift to his doctor, Dr George de Bellio. De Bellio was a Romanian homeopathic physician and a loyal collector of works by the Impressionists. On occasion he made timely purchases of works by Pissarro as well as providing free medicine and advice. These purchases were critically valuable to Pissarro since by the end of the 1880s his family was virtually penniless. Pissarro's sixth child was born in November of 1878, a few months after the death of Piette, their friend and benefactor in Montfoucault. Pissarro expressed his general despair in a note to the critic Théodore Duret "So you see business is dreadful. Soon I shall be old, my eyesight will be failing, and I shall be no better off than I was twenty years ago" (quoted in R.E. Shikes and P. Harper, Pissarro his Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 144).
As the fourth Impressionist exhibition approached in 1879 other Impressionist artists were feeling similar financial pressures. The art market was swamped with landscapes and with a certain shrewdness Pissarro turned to figurative and genre pieces. Le Père Melon allumant sa pipe is an excellent example of the work of this period. Duret had advised Pissarro to hire models and to put more emphasis on the human figure in his paintings. In response Pissarro replied "I have always thought about painting, as you advise me to do....the thing is to find a suitable person in the proper character who would be willing to pose". Presumably, Le Père Melon was exactly such a character because he is a recurring subject in Pissarro's works of 1880.
The present drawing was originally executed by Pissarro circa 1879-1880. There are areas of re-touching by another hand.