“I haven’t been able to resist painting, so beautiful are the views around my garden”
- Pissarro, in reference to Éragny

Fig. 1 Pissarro painting on his rolling easel, Éragny, circa 1895

Pissarro painted Les Bords de l’Epte à Éragny the very year he moved to Éragny, where he would remain until his death almost two decades later. This charming hamlet on the banks of the Epte served as the primary subject and inspiration for Pissarro’s innovative work during these critical years. He tirelessly explored the surrounding countryside with a rolling easel, painting everything he saw—from the landscape to the livestock to the local inhabitants at work (see fig. 1).

Pissarro in the 1880s: The Move to Éragny & toward Neo-Impressionism
  • 1880
  • Rue des roches au Valhermeil à Auvers-sur-Oise, chaumières et vache
    oil on canvas
    23 ⅝ by 28 ½ in.
    60 by 72.5 cm.

    Sotheby's New York, 7 November 2007
    Estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000
    Achieved: $3,625,000

Pissarro drew inexhaustible inspiration from the landscape in and around Éragny over the course of twenty years. He painted the countryside in all seasons and at all times of day, returning to the same spots time and again, yet drawing remarkable richness and diversity from the limited stretch of terrain.

“His representations of these fields and gardens constitute the most spectacularly intense pictorial effort to ‘cover’ a particular space in his career… His infrequent travels always brought him back to Éragny with renewed resources, fresh ideas, and an eagerness to paint the same and yet ever different locations once again”
- Joachim Pissarro

Fig. 2 Postcard photograph of the banks of the Epte in Éragny

The setting of Les Bords de l’Epte à Éragny is a testament to the exact phenomenon described by Pissarro’s great grandson Joachim. For example, the spire tucked away in the landscape, recognizable as the belfry of the local church (see fig. 2), can be found throughout Pissarro’s oeuvre—always in vastly different compositions and conditions that achieve unique effects.

left: Fig. 3 Camille Pissarro, The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Éragny, 1886, oil on canvas, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis

right: Fig. 4 Camille Pissarro, Les Bords de l’Epte à Éragny, soleil couchant, 1897, oil on canvas, sold: Christie’s London, 26 February 2019, lot 42 for £791,250 ($1,049,039)

Les Bords de l’Epte à Éragny is emblematic of this time in Pissarro’s life not just in setting and subject matter, but in style. It represents a departure from the pure Impressionism that defined the artist’s work in the 1870s, but it predates his full embrace of Neo-Impressionism in 1885.

The composition is dynamic and balanced, with vibrant colors and staccato brushstrokes that verge on Pointillism. In fact, just a year after moving to Éragny and executing this work, Pissarro met the artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who founded Pointillism based on a “scientific” and systematic approach to painting. This was a turning point for Pissarro, who was the first of the original founding members of the Impressionist movement to understand and respond to the younger generation of artists who were beginning to push the techniques of Impressionism in new directions.

1884 is a singular year in Pissarro's oeuvre. It marked his move to Éragny and commitment to the countryside, and it set the stage for his shift toward Pointillism. The decades to come would see Pissarro at the helm of the Neo-Impressionist movement; thirty years older than Seurat and Signac, his robust output nonetheless matched their youthful, radical spirit.

The present work was in the personal collection of renowned Parisian dealer Paul Durand-Ruel for several years before entering the stock of his gallery.

Paul Durand-Ruel in his gallery