Camille Pissarro

Eugène Murer, France (acquired directly from the artist on December 26, 1878)
Paul-Émile Pissarro, France (the artist's son; a gift from the above in 1921)
Alfred A. Strelsin, New York (and sold by the estate: Christie's, New York, May 17, 1983, lot 14)
Private Collection, Tokyo (acquired in 1998)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999

Paris, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Exposition rétrospective d'oeuvres de Camille Pissarro, 1914, no. 51

Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, vol. I, Paris & Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, 1980, no. 52, pp. 108-09
Paul Alexis Trublot, "À minuit, La Collection Murer" in Le Cri du peuple, Paris, October 1887, no. 5, illustrated p. 3
Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son art, son oeuvre, vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 426, catalogued p. 141;  vol. II, no. 426, illustrated pl. 86
Paul Gachet, Deux amies des impressionnistes: Le Docteur Gachet et Murer, Paris, 1956, no. 15, illustrated p. 171
Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, vol. II, Milan, 2005, no. 536, illustrated p. 370

The canvas has been lined and the edges have been taped. The surface is richly textured . A scuff is visible to the top left corner. Scattered lines of stable craquelure appear in the areas of thickest pigment. Under UV light: certain original pigments fluoresce and there appear to be reotouches at the top left corner as well as to the broadest swathe of pink pigment at the upper right branches of the third tree from the left, though a thick layer of varnish is difficult to read through. The work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Painted in 1877, the present work depicts the barnyard at "La Maison Rouge," the house at 18 rue de L'Hermitage 26 which Pissarro and his young family occupied from April 1874 to the summer of 1881. Pissarro moved to Pontoise in 1866 and remained there until 1883. Located some twenty-five miles northwest of Paris, Pontoise’s location on a hilltop, at a crossing of the river Oise made it a particularly picturesque locale, while its proximity to Paris ensured the development of industry to supplement the traditional agricultural economy. This in turn made for great subject matter, providing opportunities for Pissarro to record crowded semi-urban genre scenes, views of roads and factories, and more rural subjects such as farmers working on the fields and isolated landscapes devoid of human presence. Depictions of the artists’ house from this period show both the genteel bourgeois garden where Pissarro’s wife Julie enjoyed reading or working on needlework, the children playing in the sun and the more functional agricultural barnyard or basse-cour where the family kept poultry.

Pissarro set himself apart from his fellow Impressionist painters with his candid depictions of rural life and those working on the land, this made possible by his utter immersion in the life in Pontoise. The series of paintings created in this period provide intimate portrayals of the toils and daily experiences of the men and women of the heartland, away from the glamorous bustle of urban modernity in nearby Paris. While Pissarro did not overtly romanticize his subjects, he captured the authenticity of their experience through the filter of his dazzling Impressionist technique and rich chromatic choices. Depictions of chickens and geese are common in this period, reflecting his personal affinity for the subject matter as well as the continuing dialogue he had with other members of the Impressionist group, here notably with Claude Monet who exhibited his jaunty turkeys in a field, Les Dindons (1876), in the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. The present work is part genre scene, part townscape, the tall wall separating the artist’s barnyard from the adjoining houses on the outskirts of the village.

The first owner of this painting was Eugène Murer, a pâtissier and restauranteur by profession and a renowned Impressionist art collector who would amass more than a hundred Impressionist canvases by 1890. He was a friend of many of the artists in the Impressionist group and sat for a wonderful portrait by Renoir, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 1877, the year the present lot was painted (see fig. 1). Pissarro wrote to Murer in December 1878, discussing the purchase of the present painting and another: “I think you will be pleased with my two paintings… they are carefully studied canvases, especially the one of the red house. I’ve never done anything better’’ (unpublished letter, L. and S. archives, quoted in Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., p. 371).