CAMILLE PISSARRO | Rue du Fond-de-l'Hermitage, Pontoise

Charles Ricada, France (sold: Drouot, Paris, 20th-21st March 1893, lot 117)
Sale: Drouot, Paris, 25th May 1932, lot 76
Private Collection, Switzerland 
Private Collection, Switzerland (by descent from the above in 1947)
Private Collection, Switzerland (by descent from the above in 1980)
Thence by descent to the late owner

(possibly) London, Leicester Galleries, Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Camille Pissarro, 1920, no. 63 

(possibly) 'Art. A Great Impressionist', in Truth, London, May 1920, p. 978 
(possibly) 'Camille Pissarro', in The Westminster Gazette, London, 9th June 1920, p. 8 
Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son Art – Son Œuvre, San Francisco, 1939, no. 372, illustrated pl. 74
Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Critical Catalogue of Paintings, Paris, 2005, vol. II, no. 452, illustrated p. 327

Please contact the Impressionist and Modern Art Department (Phoebe.Liu@sothebys.com) for the condition report for this lot.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Camille Pissarro lived in Pontoise between 1866 and 1883. During this period, he emerged as a leading figure of the burgeoning Impressionist movement and was the only artist to contribute to all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions. The present work was painted in the year that the second exhibition was staged and includes all the hallmarks of the nascent Impressionist technique. In its bold compositional format, which lends generous depth to the scene, and the dabs of bright colour which articulate the shimmering rays of sun, Rue du Fond-de-l’Hermitage, Pontoise embodies the spirit of innovation. Hitherto, rural paintings were the concern of the 19^th-century landscape tradition and largely adhered to a format of open plains and bucolic romanticism, depicted in a realist manner. The Impressionists - and particularly Camille Pissarro - revitalised the genre, diminishing its pastoral idealism in favour of a contemporary vitality. Pontoise - with its economy based in agriculture and industry - provided Pissarro with both the inspiration and subject matter for his depictions of modern rural life. During his years living in the Hermitage district of Pontoise, Pissarro produced some of the most dynamic and beautiful depictions produced in the Impressionist idiom, including the magnificent Rue du Fond-de-L’Hermitage, Pontoise. Pissarro's personal style was encouraged and informed by his close friend and fellow painter Paul Cézanne. Among their contemporaries, it was the friendship of these two men that was notably strong and the one which bound together their artistic milieu. They had met in the early 1960s at the Academie de Charles Suisse in Paris and recognised in each other the same fundamental desire to innovate academic tradition. When Pissarro moved to Pontoise, Cézanne was a regular visitor. They would paint side by side and influence each other's artistic decisions. Cézanne's landscapes of this period appear to achieve a certain lightness of tone that Pissarro consistently employed; in turn, Pissarro's works acknowledge a formal coherence and decisiveness that is indebted to Cézanne's practice. They both, however, remained true to their instincts, pursuing their own perception of sensation. One passerby on observing them both is said to have remarked: 'M. Pissarro dabbed, while M. Cézanne daubed' (Susie Brooks, Impressionism, Minnesota, 2020, p. 23). Cézanne painted the same house that features in the present work, no. 23-25 rue de l'Hermitage, now in the collection of the Stiftung Langmatt Sidney and Jenny Brown, Baden.