Camille Pissarro

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist on January 14, 1881)

Sammarcelli (acquired from the above on December 10, 1891 and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Collection X, April 22, 1895, lot 60)

Durand-Ruel and Boussod & Valadon, Paris (acquired from the above)

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired Boussod & Valadon's share of the painting on March 30, 1900)

Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires (acquired from the above on March 23, 1943 and until at least 1965)

Sale: Christie's, London, April 11, 1972, lot 51

Private Collection (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 11, 1987, lot 33)

Acquired at the above sale

 

Paris, 35, Boulevard des Capucines, Sixième Exposition de peinture, 1881, no. 68

Paris, 9, Boulevard de la Madeleine, Oeuvres de C. Pissarro, 1883, no. 24

Rheims, Société des Amis des Arts, 15e Exposition de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie, 1896, no. 594

Stockholm, Konst- och Industri-Utställningen, 1897, no. 1685

Berlin, Kaiserhof Hotel, Exposition de tableaux modernes, 1897

Saint Petersburg, Société Impériale d'Encouragement des Arts; Moscow, Exposition française des Beaux-Arts et des Arts décoratifs, 1899, no. 276

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, 1904, no. 60

London, Grafton Galleries, Pictures by Boudin, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, 1905, no. 175

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Pissarro, 1908, no. 12

Brussels, Musée Moderne, Vie et lumière, 1908, no. 182

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Tableaux et gouaches par Camille Pissarro, 1910, no. 1

Paris, Chambre Syndicale de la Curiosité et des Beaux-Arts, L'Art français au service de la science française, 1923, no. 207

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Oeuvres importantes de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, 1925, no. 12

New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Paintings by Camille Pissarro in Retrospect, 1933, no. 18

New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, The Art of Camille Pissarro in Retrospect, 1941, no. 11

Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, El Impresionismo francés en las colecciones argentinas, 1962

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Monet to Matisse: French Art in Southern California Collections, 1991

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum; Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Théo Van Gogh (1857-91): marchand de tableaux, collectionneur, frère de Vincent, 1999, no. 53

San Diego Museum of Art, Personal Views: Regarding Private Collections in San Diego, 2007

San Diego Museum of Art, 1987-2007 (on loan)

Charles Ephrussi, CAC, April 16, 1881, pp. 126-127

Stephens, Brush and Pencil, Chicago, March 1904, illustrated p. 432

Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi,  Camille Pissarro: son art--son oeuvre, vol. I, Paris,  1939, no. 512, catalogued p. 153; vol. II, no. 512, illustrated pl. 104

Lionello Venturi and Jorge Romero Brest,  Colección Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1965, fig. 27, illustrated p. 41

John Rewald, Studies in Post-Impressionism, 1986, listed p. 96 (titled Paysage à Auvers)

Richard Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise: the Painter in a Landscape, New Haven, 1990, discussed p. 44

Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro I--V, Paris, 1991, no. 87, p. 147, no. 4

Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro. Catalogue critique des peintures, vol. II, Paris, 2005, no. 632, illustrated p. 423

The canvas is relined. Under UV, no evidence of inpainting.
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Two peasants, a man carrying a bundle of sticks and woman leading a cow,  meet on the Rue des Roches in the village of Le Valhermeil in the commune of Auvers-sur-Oise on a summer's day. According to Richard Brettell, the present work is one of the few occasions in which Pissarro depicted the thatched-roofed cottages (chaumières) that were to be found in the hamlets around Pontoise. These cottages provide the structural organization of the painting, framing the road and leading our eye into the hamlet, their roofs giving way to the hills and trees beyond.

Pissarro first exhibited this painting at the 6^th Impressionist Exhibition in 1881. In his review of the artist's contributions to the show the critic J.-K. Huysmans praised Pissarro's landscapes, stating: "In short, M. Pissarro can now be classed among the remarkable and daring painters we have. If he can preserve this eye -- so perceptive, so agile, so fine -- we will certainly have in him the most original landscapist of our time." Of particular note to those who saw this work and the other landscapes Pissarro chose to exhibit was his stippled brushwork, made up of tiny vibrant strokes that together formed a dense and shimmering surface. This marked a break from the smoother application of paint and more subdued tones Pissarro had presented in the 5^th Impressionist Exhibition the previous year. Huysmans seems to have immediately understood the artist's intention with this new technique: "From close up [the painting] is like brickwork, a strange wrinkled [patchwork], a stew of colors of all kinds covering the canvas with lilac, Naples yellow, madder-red, and green; at a distance, it is the air that moves, it is the sky that is boundless, it is nature that palpitates. . ." (Joris-Karl Huysmans, "L'exposition des indépendants en 1881," cited in Charles Moffett, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, Washington, 1986, p. 347). Indeed, the shadow cast by the cottage in the foreground is a dappled pool of blues, violets, and greens that fuse together when viewed at a distance yet maintain a pulsating vibrancy near at hand due to the discrete application of varied strokes and colors.

 

For Pissarro, the rural countryside around Pontoise, where he lived from 1866 to 1868 and again from 1872-1882, represented the antithesis to modern urban life. Indeed, in paintings such as this and others from this period (see figs. 1 & 2).  Pissarro celebrates, as Robert Herbert suggested, "ideals of health, honest labor and dignity which he set against the pollution and degraded labor of the city" (Robert Herbert, "City vs. Country: The rural Image in French Painting from Millet to Gauguin," Artforum 2, 1970, pp. 44-55).

Fig. 1, Camille Pissarro, Chaumières au Valhermeil, Auvers-sur-Oise, 1880, Private Collection
Fig. 2, Camille Pissarro, Rue de Village, Auvers-sur-Oise, 1873, Private Collection