Important Notice

Lot 5

Camille Pissarro was the eldest member of the Impressionists and the most unwavering in his advocacy of the original principles of Impressionism. In 1859 he was using the facilities of the Académie Suisse in Paris where he met Monet, Guillaumin and Cézanne. No more than a large room in which young art students would pay a modest fee to practice painting live models, the Suisse had no strict rules and no teacher, so it encouraged free-thinking in... Camille Pissarro was the eldest member of the Impressionists and the most unwavering in his advocacy of the original principles of Impressionism. In 1859 he was using the facilities of the Académie Suisse in Paris where he met Monet, Guillaumin and Cézanne. No more than a large room in which young art students would pay a modest fee to practice painting live models, the Suisse had no strict rules and no teacher, so it encouraged free-thinking in artists who swapped ideas and helped each other. It was in this environment that Pissarro and his likeminded contemporaries developed a reaction against nineteenth century academic painting which was still very popular at the time. The Impressionists rebelled against the suffocating, tedious lessons of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts - they had no intention of being shut up in studios, copying masterpieces of the past and becoming bereft of inspiration. Henceforth, they decided to take their inspiration directly from nature.

By 1865 Pissarro had joined Bazille, Renoir, Monet and Sisley in the Forest of Fontainebleau near Paris, immersing themselves in nature and painting landscapes en plein air together. "Their true objective is direct and authentic contact with nature. Moments of religious drama and historical events are swept from their landscapes... The Impressionists' approach is spontaneous and immediate with importance given not to the details but to the whole, to the overall impression that reality awakens in the mind, freeof reflections and second thoughts" (A. Savorani & S. Scardoni (ed.), The Impressionists, Milan 2001, p.8).

Painted in sweeping strokes with the aid of a palette knife, the present work was most likely completed while Pissarro was sitting in a field near the village of Pontoise, where he had moved with his family in 1866. By now he had developed a sure technical hand and had learned how to apply light and color, recording the fleeting effects of atmosphere and wind on the landscape in front of him. He would regularly paint alongside his great friend Paul Cézanne and their style at this time can be closely compared. Pissarro was particularly adept at nuancing shades of green and using the modulations to suggest depth without impairing the unity of impact. His style of painting could combine spatiality and surface structure to suffuse a tranquil landscape with a dynamic sense of movement and light. As Pissarro himself urged of his fellow Impressionists: "Work at the same time upon sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression" (quoted in J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1990, p. 458).

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