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Lot Essay
The present and following lot are signed 'Pizarro,' the spelling which was "mistakenly registered at [Pissarro's] birth in the synagogue. In 1859, the artist stopped spelling his name with a 'z'" (J. Pissarro and C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., p. 47).
The dating (1856) of these paintings is similarly unusual. Pissarro left St. Thomas for good in 1855, arriving in Paris as the Exposition Universelle was beginning. The works nonetheless depict St. Thomas's exotic environs. Of the discordance between the artist's location in Paris in 1856 and the present settings, Ludovic-Rodo Pissaro has suggested: "Pissarro will have made small paintings at this time, based on his memories of the Caribbean, which his friend P. Lecreux undertook to sell for him in the Lille region" (quoted in ibid., p. 49).
The dating (1856) of these paintings is similarly unusual. Pissarro left St. Thomas for good in 1855, arriving in Paris as the Exposition Universelle was beginning. The works nonetheless depict St. Thomas's exotic environs. Of the discordance between the artist's location in Paris in 1856 and the present settings, Ludovic-Rodo Pissaro has suggested: "Pissarro will have made small paintings at this time, based on his memories of the Caribbean, which his friend P. Lecreux undertook to sell for him in the Lille region" (quoted in ibid., p. 49).