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Lot Essay
In 1874, the trajectory of Camille Pissarro's painting underwent a dramatic development. The artist had been living since 1872 in Pontoise, where he had previously resided between 1867 and 1869. But in the year of the present work, Pissarro began to spend more time at the home of his close friend Ludovic Piette in Montfoucault. There, the landscape and farming methods were more rustic than in Pontoise, with its modernized agriculture. In a letter to the critic Théodore Duret, Pissarro tellingly refers to Mayenne, Montfoucault's capital, as "the true countryside."
This more rural environment was largely responsible for the artist's turn to earthy hues and more solidly constructed figures, which became more firmly integrated within his landscapes. Duret himself also had a crucial impact on this shift from Pissarro's classic Pontoise period to what Richard Bretell calls "The New Ruralism" (op. cit., p. 160).
A champion of Pissarro's work, Duret maintained a correspondence with the artist, throughout which he encouraged Pissarro's aptitude for "nature, with its rustic fields and its animals." Duret continued, in a letter to the artist from 6 December 1873:
You do not have the decorative feeling of Sisley, nor the fantastic eye of Monet, but you do have what they don't, an intimate and profound feeling for nature, and a power in your brush that makes a good painting by you something with an absolute presence" (quoted in ibid., p. 165).
The present canvas represents an early and exemplary model of these stylistic changes. Deep, autumnal reds, greens and golds emphasize the harvest season; used to depict both the figures and their landscape, these earth tones create a link between farmer and field. Pissarro has constructed the composition with thick brushstrokes, as if paint and dirt were one and the same. And there is a dense substantiality to the multi-hued layers of hills, which eclipse all but a tiny sliver of sky from the picture. Brettell attests to the innovative status of the present canvas within the artist's oeuvre:
La récolte des pommes de terre looks astonishing to a student of Pissarro's landscapes of the classic Pontoise period without the direct evidence of the Duret-Pissarro correspondence in December 1873, one would be inclined to reject the date of 1874 for this picture (op. cit., p. 166).
Though it represented a new direction for Pissarro, this shift of the mid-1870s harkens back to the artist's predecessor in the depiction of peasant labor, Jean-François Millet. Duret was once again instrumental in this regard, having mentioned the Barbizon painter to Pissarro in a letter from this period. But if Pissarro was looking towards Millet in 1874, another artist was learning from Pissarro. Paul Cézanne had moved to Pontoise in 1872 upon Pissarro's suggestion, relocating to the nearby town of Auvers a year later. It was there that he executed Small Houses at Auvers (fig. 1) which depicts the same white farmhouse as Pissarro's painting, against the same layered hillside.
Pissarro's innovations of 1874 would also come to influence his own subsequent production. A gouache executed in 1886 (fig. 2; Pissarro and Venturi, no. 1405) translates virtually the exact composition of the present painting into a different medium, testifying to the importance this subject held for the artist.
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, Les petites maisons à Auvers, 1874-75. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge.
(fig. 2) Camille Pissarro, La récolte des pommes de terre, 1886. Private collection.
This more rural environment was largely responsible for the artist's turn to earthy hues and more solidly constructed figures, which became more firmly integrated within his landscapes. Duret himself also had a crucial impact on this shift from Pissarro's classic Pontoise period to what Richard Bretell calls "The New Ruralism" (op. cit., p. 160).
A champion of Pissarro's work, Duret maintained a correspondence with the artist, throughout which he encouraged Pissarro's aptitude for "nature, with its rustic fields and its animals." Duret continued, in a letter to the artist from 6 December 1873:
You do not have the decorative feeling of Sisley, nor the fantastic eye of Monet, but you do have what they don't, an intimate and profound feeling for nature, and a power in your brush that makes a good painting by you something with an absolute presence" (quoted in ibid., p. 165).
The present canvas represents an early and exemplary model of these stylistic changes. Deep, autumnal reds, greens and golds emphasize the harvest season; used to depict both the figures and their landscape, these earth tones create a link between farmer and field. Pissarro has constructed the composition with thick brushstrokes, as if paint and dirt were one and the same. And there is a dense substantiality to the multi-hued layers of hills, which eclipse all but a tiny sliver of sky from the picture. Brettell attests to the innovative status of the present canvas within the artist's oeuvre:
La récolte des pommes de terre looks astonishing to a student of Pissarro's landscapes of the classic Pontoise period without the direct evidence of the Duret-Pissarro correspondence in December 1873, one would be inclined to reject the date of 1874 for this picture (op. cit., p. 166).
Though it represented a new direction for Pissarro, this shift of the mid-1870s harkens back to the artist's predecessor in the depiction of peasant labor, Jean-François Millet. Duret was once again instrumental in this regard, having mentioned the Barbizon painter to Pissarro in a letter from this period. But if Pissarro was looking towards Millet in 1874, another artist was learning from Pissarro. Paul Cézanne had moved to Pontoise in 1872 upon Pissarro's suggestion, relocating to the nearby town of Auvers a year later. It was there that he executed Small Houses at Auvers (fig. 1) which depicts the same white farmhouse as Pissarro's painting, against the same layered hillside.
Pissarro's innovations of 1874 would also come to influence his own subsequent production. A gouache executed in 1886 (fig. 2; Pissarro and Venturi, no. 1405) translates virtually the exact composition of the present painting into a different medium, testifying to the importance this subject held for the artist.
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, Les petites maisons à Auvers, 1874-75. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge.
(fig. 2) Camille Pissarro, La récolte des pommes de terre, 1886. Private collection.