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Lot Essay
Chemin de Pontoise, Auvers-sur-Oise depicts a sunny day in Pontoise, a bustling market town about twenty-five miles northwest of Paris where Pissarro lived in 1866-1868 and again from 1872-1882. The canvas was painted in 1876, at the apex of Pissarro's career as an Impressionist landscape painter. Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel have described Pissarro's work from this period as "the most purely Impressionist in [his] entire oeuvre" (Pissarro, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1980, p. 79). Pissarro's work from Pontoise also had a profound influence upon a whole generation of painters, notably Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, who came to the Oise valley to work alongside the older artist. Cézanne later referred to Pissarro as "the first Impressionist," and proclaimed, "We may all descend from Pissarro" (quoted in B.E. White, Impressionists Side by Side, New York, 1996, p. 109).
With its unabashedly rural subject matter (a peasant woman working in the field), Chemin de Pontoise, Auvers-sur-Oise embodies a critical shift in Pissarro's iconographical interests that was initiated in 1874. The artist's work from the preceding years is noteworthy for its sheer variety of motifs: the streets and markets of Pontoise; the towpaths lining the banks of the Oise; the railroad tracks and cast-iron railway bridge; the factories belonging to Chalon and Cie. and Monsieur Arneuil. In 1874, however, this iconographical and geographical range gave way to a phase of intensive experimentation with peasant life and agricultural imagery. Pissarro turned his attention away from the modern center of Pontoise and began to focus instead on the landscape of L'Hermitage, a rural neighborhood on the outskirts of town, characterized by small vegetable gardens.
One impetus for this change was the advice of the eminent critic Théodore Duret, an ardent supporter of the Impressionists. In a letter dated December 1873, Duret encouraged Pissarro to concentrate on pastoral motifs: "I persist in thinking that nature, with its rustic fields and its animals, is that which corresponds best to your talent. 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. If I have any advice to give you, I would tell you not to think of either Monet or Sisley; go your own way; in your path of rustic nature, you'll go into a new path, both as far and as high as any master" (quoted in R. Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise, New Haven, 1990, p. 165). Pissarro apparently took Duret's advice to heart.
Chemin de Pontoise, Auvers-sur-Oise was previously recorded as La sente du Chou, Pontoise in Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi’s 1939 catalogue raisonné. The road was thought to have been la sente du Chou, “a slope covered with grass near the river Oise, in a hamlet called ‘Le Chou’ (The Cabbage) owing to the fact that at this time a particular species of cabbage was grown in the surroundings of Pontoise” (F. Cachin, “Some Notes on Pissarro and Symbolism” in C. Lloyd, ed., op. cit., p. 96). However, recent scholarship has identified the road as the chemin de Pontoise at Auvers-sur-Oise, where a familiar house can be seen on the hill in the background.
(fig. 1) Camille Pissarro, circa 1873. Musée Pissarro Archives, Pontoise. Barcode: 27237595FIG
With its unabashedly rural subject matter (a peasant woman working in the field), Chemin de Pontoise, Auvers-sur-Oise embodies a critical shift in Pissarro's iconographical interests that was initiated in 1874. The artist's work from the preceding years is noteworthy for its sheer variety of motifs: the streets and markets of Pontoise; the towpaths lining the banks of the Oise; the railroad tracks and cast-iron railway bridge; the factories belonging to Chalon and Cie. and Monsieur Arneuil. In 1874, however, this iconographical and geographical range gave way to a phase of intensive experimentation with peasant life and agricultural imagery. Pissarro turned his attention away from the modern center of Pontoise and began to focus instead on the landscape of L'Hermitage, a rural neighborhood on the outskirts of town, characterized by small vegetable gardens.
One impetus for this change was the advice of the eminent critic Théodore Duret, an ardent supporter of the Impressionists. In a letter dated December 1873, Duret encouraged Pissarro to concentrate on pastoral motifs: "I persist in thinking that nature, with its rustic fields and its animals, is that which corresponds best to your talent. 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. If I have any advice to give you, I would tell you not to think of either Monet or Sisley; go your own way; in your path of rustic nature, you'll go into a new path, both as far and as high as any master" (quoted in R. Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise, New Haven, 1990, p. 165). Pissarro apparently took Duret's advice to heart.
Chemin de Pontoise, Auvers-sur-Oise was previously recorded as La sente du Chou, Pontoise in Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi’s 1939 catalogue raisonné. The road was thought to have been la sente du Chou, “a slope covered with grass near the river Oise, in a hamlet called ‘Le Chou’ (The Cabbage) owing to the fact that at this time a particular species of cabbage was grown in the surroundings of Pontoise” (F. Cachin, “Some Notes on Pissarro and Symbolism” in C. Lloyd, ed., op. cit., p. 96). However, recent scholarship has identified the road as the chemin de Pontoise at Auvers-sur-Oise, where a familiar house can be seen on the hill in the background.
(fig. 1) Camille Pissarro, circa 1873. Musée Pissarro Archives, Pontoise. Barcode: 27237595FIG