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Lot Essay
In July 1871, following the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the demise of the Paris Commune, Pissarro returned from England, and moved in 1872 to Pontoise, where he would remain for the next decade. Many of his most celebrated works from the years of high Impressionism between 1874 and 1882 were painted in and around Pontoise. The rural nature and rich variety of the landscape attracted other artists including Paul Cézanne, Armand Guillaumin and Paul Gauguin, who worked alongside Pissarro in the 1870s. Pissarro's mastery did not go unnoticed by his contemporaries, and the great critic Theodore Duret was the first to praise and encourage the artist during this period. Richard Brettell comments:
Duret advised Pissarro to stress in his painting "a power of the brush" that the critic considered to be the essential character of Pissarro's aesthetic. Duret's remarks make particular sense when we confront a series of rural landscapes painted by Pissarro and his friends in and around Pontoise. The pictures tend more often than not to be strongly painted with thickly applied separate strokes of the brush or palette knife. It is precisely their power that accords with the ordinary rural subjects of the Pontoise school and is therefore the stylistic hallmark of these pictures (R. Brettell, A Day in the Country, Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984, p. 180).
Pissarro painted the Oise river and the surrounding countryside on many occasions. It afforded him an opportunity to explore the warm light of the region and the reflective quality of the water, favorite motifs of all Impressionist painters. Indeed, the present work captures the very essense of Impressionist landscape painting with the delicate transitions between shades of light and dark, the tactile brushstrokes and the sky thick with billowing clouds.
Duret advised Pissarro to stress in his painting "a power of the brush" that the critic considered to be the essential character of Pissarro's aesthetic. Duret's remarks make particular sense when we confront a series of rural landscapes painted by Pissarro and his friends in and around Pontoise. The pictures tend more often than not to be strongly painted with thickly applied separate strokes of the brush or palette knife. It is precisely their power that accords with the ordinary rural subjects of the Pontoise school and is therefore the stylistic hallmark of these pictures (R. Brettell, A Day in the Country, Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984, p. 180).
Pissarro painted the Oise river and the surrounding countryside on many occasions. It afforded him an opportunity to explore the warm light of the region and the reflective quality of the water, favorite motifs of all Impressionist painters. Indeed, the present work captures the very essense of Impressionist landscape painting with the delicate transitions between shades of light and dark, the tactile brushstrokes and the sky thick with billowing clouds.