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CAMILLE PISSARRO
1830-1903
L'HIVER A MONTFOUCAULT
(EFFET DE NEIGE)
Signed and dated 1875
Oil on canvas
45 by 43 1/4 in. 114.3 by 109.9 cm.
Provenance
Alfred Nun 3/16s, Paris (commissioned from the artist and sold: Hotel Drouot, Paris, April 16, 1894, lot 38)
Alexandre Rosenberg, Paris
Paul Rosenberg, Paris (confiscated during World War II and returned to the Rosenberg family in 1945)
Martha Hyer, Hollywood (sold: Sotheby's, London, December 7, 1966, lot 46)
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale and sold: Christie's, London, December 3, 1990, lot 12A)
Exhibited
Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, 1904, no. 35
Paris, Hotel de la Revue "Les Arts," Art Moderne, 1912
Paris, Galerie Manzi et Joyant, Camille Pissarro, 1914
Paris, MusEe de l'Orangerie, Camille Pissarro, Centenaire de la naissance de l'artiste, 1930, no. 30
London, Knoedler & Co., Sisley and Pissarro, 1934, no. 16
Literature
ThEodore Duret, "Camille Pissarro," La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, May 1904, illustrated p. 397
"Exposition d'Art Moderne 1/2 l'Hotel de la Revue 'Les Arts,' " Les Arts, Paris, December 1912, no. 128, illustrated
pl. IX
Maurice Hamel, "Exposition REtrospective de Camille Pissarro,"
Les Arts, Paris, March 1914, no. 147,
illustrated p. 30
Ludovico-Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro - son art, son oeuvre, vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 328, catalogued pl 126; vol. II, no. 328, illustrated pl. 66
JOACHIM PISSARRO, CAMILLE PISSARRO, NEW YORK, 1993, ILLUSTRATED PL. 149
In 1875, the remote hamlet of Montfoucault provided Pissarro and his family with a much needed escape. The financial and critical failure of the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, which Pissarro had played an integral role organizing, intensified his own difficult financial situation and was coupled with the death of his daughter in the same year. Montfoucault consisted of only a few farms and lay on the border of Brittany and Normandy. Nevertheless, it was still an arduous day's journey from the capital but the setting was ideal because Pissarro was in search of a new location where he could further develop his interest in rural scenes and peasant life that inspired him at Pontoise in the early 1870s. Montfoucault presented quite a different atmosphere from the suburban and gentrified life of Pontoise - its rugged terrain, enclosed fields, and limited rather than expansive horizon line, suggested seclusion and isolation from the cares and concerns of
modern life.
Ludovic Piette, a wealthy landowner, painter and friend of Pissarro, wrote of the area's unique attraction and invited the artist and his family to stay with him: "When I am by myself in a wood, contemplating nature, I regain all the strengths that worldly events take away from me; I would like to paint all that is beautiful that I see around me, and you know better than I that winter is full of exhilaration for a painter" (quoted in Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. 1998, p. 148). Pissarro was obviously allured, and during the winters of 1874 and 1875 he executed a series of paintings that marked the apex of his engagement with winter scenes, an interest that spanned his entire career. As the depiction of Piette's house demonstrates (see fig. 1), these images tend to emphasize the daily activities of local peasants, their connection to seasonal cycles and the overarching presence of the landscape that embraces, even dwarfs its inhabitants - figures are integral to the surroundings as they perform daily tasks. Indeed, this relationship of peasants to the landscape permitted Pissarro to address particular pictorial problems, such as the integration of the figures into their setting in innovative and seemingly uncontrived ways.
The present painting depicts the frozen pond at Montfoucault that Pissarro returned to on several occasions at different times of year. While his peasants of Pontoise are consistently caught in motion, here the figure is still, silent and rooted in time and place. The solitary figure attending cows as they drink from an icy pond is based on the drawing L'Etang 1/2 Montfoucault (see fig. 2) which also served as a study for Automne: L'Etang 1/2 Montfoucault and L'Abreuvoir de Montfoucault (see fig. 3). While placed in the foreground of the other depictions, here the girl and animals have been pushed to the far side of the pond, at once framed and masked by the tree. Indeed, the tree plays an important and sophisticated compositional role as Joachim Pissarro has observed: "The complex movement of its entangled branches adds a touch of chaos, lyricism, even madness, to this otherwise impeccably silent, well-ordered composition... We see, consequently, that the subject matter of this picture is not just cows drinking in a frozen pond where the ice is broken, nor is it a tree; rather it is a complex ensemble in which all the elements either interact with or counteract each other" (Joachim Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, New York, 1993, p. 150).
The remarkable technique with which this painting is executed, reflects Pissarro's collaboration with CEzanne when they painted side by side in Pontoise. Using both brush and palette knife he delineates forms with short, straight lines that have a crystalline quality perfectly suited for rendering the ice and snow covered vegetation. According to Joachim Pissarro, the painting can be seen bringing together "lessons learned from CEzanne and Courbet, as well as displaying a unique approach to subject matter and composition. An extremely cohesive, chromatic harmony of the cold, rich surface of icy blues and greens is toned down with white, which unifies everything. The three elements seem to have fused into one: there is a daunting sense of continuity among the snow-covered earth, the frozen pond, and the heavily loaded sky heralding a further layer of snow. This cycle can even be read as a metaphor for the making of this picture - the canvas having been repeatedly covered with new layers of paint" (ibid., p. 150).
Pissarro's sojourn in Montfoucault was one of self-reflection and isolation that proved to be professionally cathartic. The sense of physical and temporal distance suggested by the location and brought to life by this painting seems to have strengthened the artist both psychologically and creatively. Although the Impressionists are usually associated with spring and summer scenes, Pissarro maintained a deep affection for the atmosphere and visual intensity of winter, which inspired some of his most striking and sensitive work.