CAMILLE PISSARRO | Paysannes ramassant des herbes, Eragny

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist in September 1886)
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (transferred from the above by 1891)
Chester Johnson Galleries, Chicago (acquired from the above in December 1930)
Sarah Wood Armour Trust, Lake Forest, Illinois (acquired from the above; sale: Sotheby's, New York, 3rd May 2011, lot 9)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Paris, 1 rue Laffitte, Huitième Exposition de peinture, 1886, no. 102 (titled Plein soleil)
New York, National Academy of Design, Celebrated Paintings by Great French Masters, 1887, no. 169
Boston, Chase's Gallery, Paintings by the Impressionists of Paris: Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, 1891, no. 10
(possibly) New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Paintings by Camille Pissarro, 1903, no. 17
New York, The Armory of the 69th Infantry; Chicago, The Art Institute & Boston, Copley Hall, International Exhibition of Modern Art (The Armory Show), 1913, no. 501
Waterbury, Mattatuck Historical Society, 1925, n.n.
Kansas City, Art Institute, 1930, n.n.
London, Eykyn Maclean Ltd., Van Gogh in Paris, 2013, no. 24, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, Pissarro à Eragny. La Nature retrouvée, 2017, n.n., illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Rodolphe Darzens, La Pléiade, Paris, May 1886, mentioned p. 90 (titled Plein soleil)
Marcel Fouquier, Le XIXe siècle, Paris, 16th May 1886, mentioned p. 2
Gustave Geffroy, La Justice, Paris, 21st May 1886
George Auriol, Le Chat noir, Paris, 22nd May 1886, mentioned p. 2
Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro - son art, son œuvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, no. 699, catalogued p. 179; vol. II, no. 699, illustrated pl. 145
Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, Milan, 2005, vol. III, no. 830, illustrated p. 546

Dating from 1886, the present work was painted in Eragny, a small village on the banks of the river Epte. Pissarro and his family moved to Eragny, situated some three kilometres from Gisors, in the spring of 1884. In 1892 Pissarro, with the financial help of Claude Monet who lived in the neighbouring Giverny, would purchase the house his family had been renting for the previous eight years; the house exists to this day, in a street named after the artist. Pissarro was delighted with the tranquillity of his new environment, and with the endless source of inspiration it offered him. In a letter to his son Lucien dated 1st March 1884, the artist wrote: ‘Yes, we’ve made up our minds on Eragny-sur-Epte. The house is superb and inexpensive: a thousand francs, with garden and meadow. It’s two hours from Paris. I found the region much more beautiful than Compiègne […] Gisors is superb: we’d seen nothing!’ (quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., p. 499). During the years spent in Eragny, Pissarro liked to alternate between urban and rural scenes. He often went to harbour cities like Rouen and Le Havre, to Paris where he met with friends as well as dealers, and to London, where he was visiting his sons. Exhausted by frequent travels, the artist would return to the peace of Eragny, where he took joy in painting the garden and the meadow in front of his house, as well as the neighbouring villages of Gisors and Bazincourt. Henceforth, Eragny became the focal point of Pissarro’s art, and as Joachim Pissarro has observed: ‘His representations of these fields and gardens constitute the most spectacularly intense pictorial effort to ‘cover’ a particular given space in his career’ (J. Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, London, 1993, p. 225).

Included in the eighth and final official Impressionist exhibition in 1886 under the title Plein soleil, the present work introduced the new neo-Impressionist divisionist style that Pissarro would develop over the following years. Critical reception of the Eighth Impressionist exhibition identified a stylistic turning of the tides in the paintings of some of the participants, including those of Pissarro and newcomers Seurat and Signac. Pissarro's paintings elicited generous praise, particularly for his glorious renderings of agricultural labour. ‘Here are fields, real fields,’ marvelled George Auriol in response to Paysannes ramassant des herbes, Eragny. ‘Here are people working in the fields!’ (reprinted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., p. 546). A more detailed criticism by Marcel Fouquier of the style of this composition was equally glowing: ‘Bright Sunshine [the present work] and Meadows at Bazincourt in the Morning (ibid., no. 792) are paintings that possess great character and the profound charm of nature and poetry. The brushwork is remarkable. M. Pissarro paints with small, distinct, precise touches and subtle and penetrating juxtapositions of pure tones. His canvases are so dotted that from up close they are like a collection of diversely coloured nail heads, but when viewed from the right distance, a perspective is established, the planes gain depth, and, the sky being handled with a deliberate lightness, and impression of vast space and an indefinite horizon is produced’ (ibid., p. 521).

In Pissarro’s opinion, Impressionism was already over in 1883, and it was at this time that he embraced the Neo-Impressionist technique, under the influence of Seurat, who proclaimed Pissarro to be the first of the Impressionist painters to convert to the Neo-Impressionist style. Pissarro and Seurat were developing the pointillist technique independently of each other, and when they finally met in 1885, they were keen to exchange ideas on colour theories and scientific research into the nature and effect of colour. The present work is a stunning example of Pissarro’s own version of pointillism, using short, fragmented brushstrokes to create vivid colour contrasts and captures the dazzling effect of bright sunshine. Whilst he adopted this technique with an assured manner, he did not apply it with the doctrinary vigour of Seurat, and he retained his interest in exploring the nuances of light and atmospheric changes, a legacy of his earlier Impressionist style.

Shown in New York in 1887, the year after it was painted, Paysannes ramassant des herbes, Eragny was one of the first of the artist's works to be exhibited in the United States, introducing the American audience to the most current stylistic transformations occurring in Paris at the time.