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Lot Essay
Camille Pissarro's La route de Louveciennes, painted in 1872, is an engaging early landscape dating from the formative early years of Impressionism and showing one of the towns that was to be a birthplace for the movement. Louveciennes was home for Pissarro for the crucial years at the end of the 1860s and during the early 1870s before he moved to Pontoise in April of the year this work was painted. In Louveciennes he was in close contact with other artists of the movement that would imminently gain the name 'Impressionism'. Sisley lived nearby, as did Renoir's mother, meaning that the latter artist visited often. Likewise, Pissarro was in close contact with Monet at the time. The location of Louveciennes also meant that Paris, only a half-hour's train ride away, was easily accessible, as were the soirées and salons of the artists and intellectuals there. This enabled Pissarro to have his fingers on the pulse of all artistic developments taking place at this time, clearly exemplified by the Impressionist brushstrokes with which he has captured this scene.
Pissarro had already enjoyed several breakthroughs in the development of his Impressionist style during the 1860s, gradually shedding the influence of older artists such as Corot in favour of the pleinairisme favoured by many of the artists in his circle and evident in La route de Louveciennes. However, one of these major breakthroughs came during his time, just before this picture was painted, away from Louveciennes. For, from late 1870 until late the next year, Pissarro had sought to escape the rigours, trials and traumas of the Franco-Prussian War by fleeing, with his family in tow, to London. There, he was exposed to many vital influences, for instance the pictures of Turner and the Italian Old Masters in the National Gallery, the guidance of Daubigny, who was also in London, and the friendship of his younger colleague and fellow painter, Monet. Meanwhile, another crucial event took place in Louveciennes, where the Prussians had taken over his home and destroyed almost all of his early work, an estimated thousand pictures. Pissarro, rather than grieving this loss in any great way, appears to have reacted by throwing himself once more into his work, abandoning some of the stylistic constraints that had earlier hampered him. These months following his return to Louveciennes, then, marked an incredible leap forward in his painting, cementing Pissarro on his new path, as is amply demonstrated by La route de Louveciennes. During the picture's extensive history, it is thought to have been part of the legendary collection of Achille Arosa, as well as later being owned by Sir Laurence Philipps, who was raised to the peerage as Lord Milford in 1939.
Pissarro had already enjoyed several breakthroughs in the development of his Impressionist style during the 1860s, gradually shedding the influence of older artists such as Corot in favour of the pleinairisme favoured by many of the artists in his circle and evident in La route de Louveciennes. However, one of these major breakthroughs came during his time, just before this picture was painted, away from Louveciennes. For, from late 1870 until late the next year, Pissarro had sought to escape the rigours, trials and traumas of the Franco-Prussian War by fleeing, with his family in tow, to London. There, he was exposed to many vital influences, for instance the pictures of Turner and the Italian Old Masters in the National Gallery, the guidance of Daubigny, who was also in London, and the friendship of his younger colleague and fellow painter, Monet. Meanwhile, another crucial event took place in Louveciennes, where the Prussians had taken over his home and destroyed almost all of his early work, an estimated thousand pictures. Pissarro, rather than grieving this loss in any great way, appears to have reacted by throwing himself once more into his work, abandoning some of the stylistic constraints that had earlier hampered him. These months following his return to Louveciennes, then, marked an incredible leap forward in his painting, cementing Pissarro on his new path, as is amply demonstrated by La route de Louveciennes. During the picture's extensive history, it is thought to have been part of the legendary collection of Achille Arosa, as well as later being owned by Sir Laurence Philipps, who was raised to the peerage as Lord Milford in 1939.