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拍品專文
In August 1872, Pissarro moved his family back to Pontoise, where he had previously lived from 1867 to 1869. In the interim period he had lived in Louveciennes and visited London, but the poor sales of his paintings put severe financial constraints on him, and he hoped that Pontoise would again provide him with a favorable setting for his work. For the next ten years, Pissarro's life and work would become closely linked to the town of Pontoise. There, he painted more than three hundred pictures of the town and its surrounding countryside. These canvases pay homage to the rural solitude that also attracted Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, who came there to work with Pissarro in 1877, the same year that the present work was painted. According to Rick Brettell, the paintings he produced during his years in Pontoise "form what is probably the most sustained portrait of a place painted by any French landscape painter in the nineteenth century" (Pissarro and Pontoise, The Painter in a Landscape, New Haven, 1990, p. 1).
The orchard was a motif that Pissarro painted repeatedly during different seasons and in varying weather conditions. In the present work, Pissarro depicts the buildings of the village as seen through barren tree branches, and the composition follows a formula that is representative of his oeuvre from these years. The trees and the steeple of the church create strong verticals that contrast with the horizontals of the landscape. To provide a focal point and enliven the composition, Pissarro has added a single asymmetrical tree in the foreground. Finally, his skillful use of vivid color underscores the sense of immediacy to the scene.
Pissarro succeeded in recording the sensations he experienced in front of nature to render a landscape that is harmonious in its simplicity and decorative unity. Théodore Duret, art critic and close friend of Edouard Manet, was one of the first people to recognize the ease with which Pissarro could deal with a conventional view and yet find a way to render it as if he had stumbled upon it by accident. He told Pissarro: "You haven't Sisley's decorative feeling, nor Monet's fanciful eye, but you have what they have not, an intimate and profound feeling for nature and a power of brush, with the result that a beautiful picture by you is something absolutely definitive. If I had a piece of advice to give to you, I should say ‘Don't think of Monet or of Sisley, don't pay attention to what they are doing, go on your own, your path of rural nature. You'll be going along a new road, as far and as high as any master!’” (quoted in C. Lloyd, Camille Pissarro, London, 1979, p. 70).
According to Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, to paint this work Pissarro “set up his easel in an orchard at Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, to the east of the church of Saint-Maclou (the present-day cathedral of Pontoise). Immediately to the left of the steeple are the former Law Courts of Pontoise (now the Musée Tavet-Delacour, see no. 292). Enclosing the orchard is the old protective wall of the abbey of Maubuisson at Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône. The church of Saint-Maclou is seen again in no. 322, but viewed from the opposite side” (op. cit.).
The orchard was a motif that Pissarro painted repeatedly during different seasons and in varying weather conditions. In the present work, Pissarro depicts the buildings of the village as seen through barren tree branches, and the composition follows a formula that is representative of his oeuvre from these years. The trees and the steeple of the church create strong verticals that contrast with the horizontals of the landscape. To provide a focal point and enliven the composition, Pissarro has added a single asymmetrical tree in the foreground. Finally, his skillful use of vivid color underscores the sense of immediacy to the scene.
Pissarro succeeded in recording the sensations he experienced in front of nature to render a landscape that is harmonious in its simplicity and decorative unity. Théodore Duret, art critic and close friend of Edouard Manet, was one of the first people to recognize the ease with which Pissarro could deal with a conventional view and yet find a way to render it as if he had stumbled upon it by accident. He told Pissarro: "You haven't Sisley's decorative feeling, nor Monet's fanciful eye, but you have what they have not, an intimate and profound feeling for nature and a power of brush, with the result that a beautiful picture by you is something absolutely definitive. If I had a piece of advice to give to you, I should say ‘Don't think of Monet or of Sisley, don't pay attention to what they are doing, go on your own, your path of rural nature. You'll be going along a new road, as far and as high as any master!’” (quoted in C. Lloyd, Camille Pissarro, London, 1979, p. 70).
According to Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, to paint this work Pissarro “set up his easel in an orchard at Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, to the east of the church of Saint-Maclou (the present-day cathedral of Pontoise). Immediately to the left of the steeple are the former Law Courts of Pontoise (now the Musée Tavet-Delacour, see no. 292). Enclosing the orchard is the old protective wall of the abbey of Maubuisson at Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône. The church of Saint-Maclou is seen again in no. 322, but viewed from the opposite side” (op. cit.).