Camille Pissarro

Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the above in August 1891)

Ludwig Prager, Munich (acquired from the above in October 1912)

Private Collection, Switzerland (probably acquired circa 1940)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Tableaux et gouaches par Camille Pissarro, 1910, no. 86 (titled Un Village)

Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, son art - son œuvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, no. 1548, catalogued p. 294; vol. II, no. 1548, illustrated pl. 297 

Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro. Catalogue critique des peintures, Milan, 2005, vol. II, n.n., illustrated p. 422

Executed in 1880, Rue de village à Auvers bears witness to one of the most important artistic friendships of the late nineteenth century. Pissarro first met Cézanne in 1861, later recalling of the occasion: ‘Was I seeing right in 1861 when Oller and I went to see that peculiar Provençal at the Académie Suisse, where Cézanne was doing life studies that provoked roars of laughter from all the impotents of the school – among others the famous Jacquet, who had long been buried in prettiness’ (quoted in Cézanne & Pissarro. Pioneering Modern Painting (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2005, p. 18). It was this frustration with the ‘prettiness’ of the established schools of French painting that initially drew the two artists together. Over the following years they corresponded frequently, sharing their ideas for a new kind of art; by the 1870s they had become close friends and were often to be found working closely together. This reciprocal relationship, with the two artists painting the same landscapes and motifs in their own distinctive styles and increasingly working alongside one another, would continue to develop over the next decade.

Rue de village à Auvers exemplifies both the exchange between the two artists and their very independent approaches. Cézanne depicted the same view in his painting La Route tournante (fig. 1), although his viewpoint is further back than Pissarro’s, allowing for a more ranging panorama. The motif of the turning road was important to both artists at the time, as Joachim Pissarro writes: ‘Other sets of pictorial concerns shared by the two artists include an exploration of the tension between receding spaces and foregrounds, and the visual tension that results from the opposition between a turning road or a lopsided vantage point and the plane surface of the painted canvas. In all these works, the precepts of early Impressionism receive a new inflection. It also offers an apt metaphor for the new directions of their art’ (J. Pissarro in ibid., p. 145).

Stylistically the two works also illustrate the exchange of ideas between the artists. Pissarro’s inspired handling of the pastel medium in Rue de village à Auvers echoes his canvases of the period, in which he often adopted his fellow artist’s technique of using individual parallel brushstrokes. However, whilst Cézanne’s strokes are predominately downwards, Pissarro revels in brushstrokes that seem to proliferate in multiple directions; equally, where Cézanne’s palette is made up of subdued greens and browns, Pissarro uses vivid blues and yellows. The result is a completely different effect; in comparison to his companion, Pissarro retains a far more Impressionist immediacy, brilliantly conjuring the blustery liveliness of a sunny day.