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Lot Essay
In the paintings that Pissarro made in and around Pontoise in 1872-1873, the so-called "classic Pontoise period" leading up to the First Impressionist Exhibition, the artist fully developed his technique, adopting a lighter, brighter palette and a more delicate touch. The landscape in this area provided Pissarro with seemingly limitless artistic inspiration. His work from this period is noteworthy for its great variety of motifs: the streets and markets of Pontoise itself; 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; the rural thatched cottages in adjacent Auvers; and the wheat harvests and haystacks near Ennery. Richard Brettell has explained, "Pissarro took Pontoise by storm, at least pictorially, when he returned there [in 1872]...He was experiencing a professional optimism he would not feel again until the 1890s. He was alive to the landscape, allowing its multiple realities to affect him more fully than ever before" (Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in a Landscape, London, 1990, p. 158).
The present work depicts a woman walking with a cow along a tranquil country path, either from village to pasture or vice versa. This subject—villagers walking on paths through the French countryside—was one of the artist’s favorites, reflecting his interest in the pulse of daily rural life. The figures are dwarfed amidst the great expanse of nature, composed of uniformly small touches of paint which overlap subtly to achieve a unified but variegated surface, highlighting the different textures of the grass and trees, earth and sky. Brettell has concluded, "The style of the classic Pontoise period shows a balance between construction and sensation that Pissarro never again achieved" (ibid., p. 153).
Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel have explained, "Stylistically, the first half of the 1870s is perhaps Pissarro's best known creative period, and the canvases painted [then] have been more readily appreciated than those painted at any other time in his whole career. The artist retains a firmly controlled geometric structure as the framework for his compositions, but he employs a lighter touch in his brushwork and a brighter palette, both of which show the influence of Monet, whose technique of freely applying broken, separate patches of pure pigment Pissarro approached closely at this time. The paintings dating from the opening years of the 1870s therefore may, like those of Monet and Renoir, with good reason be described as the most purely Impressionist in Pissarro's entire oeuvre" (Pissarro, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1980, p. 79).
The present work depicts a woman walking with a cow along a tranquil country path, either from village to pasture or vice versa. This subject—villagers walking on paths through the French countryside—was one of the artist’s favorites, reflecting his interest in the pulse of daily rural life. The figures are dwarfed amidst the great expanse of nature, composed of uniformly small touches of paint which overlap subtly to achieve a unified but variegated surface, highlighting the different textures of the grass and trees, earth and sky. Brettell has concluded, "The style of the classic Pontoise period shows a balance between construction and sensation that Pissarro never again achieved" (ibid., p. 153).
Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel have explained, "Stylistically, the first half of the 1870s is perhaps Pissarro's best known creative period, and the canvases painted [then] have been more readily appreciated than those painted at any other time in his whole career. The artist retains a firmly controlled geometric structure as the framework for his compositions, but he employs a lighter touch in his brushwork and a brighter palette, both of which show the influence of Monet, whose technique of freely applying broken, separate patches of pure pigment Pissarro approached closely at this time. The paintings dating from the opening years of the 1870s therefore may, like those of Monet and Renoir, with good reason be described as the most purely Impressionist in Pissarro's entire oeuvre" (Pissarro, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1980, p. 79).