Camille Pissarro

Jean-Baptiste Faure, Paris

Camentron, Paris

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the above on May 25, 1916)

M. Caressa, Paris (acquired from the above on October 10, 1916)

O’Hana Gallery, London

Knud Abilgaard, Copenhagen (acquired from the above in June 1963)

Jasper Brum Rasmussen (sold: Sotheby’s, London, March 31, 1987, lot 7)

Davlyn Gallery, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Acquired by the present owner in 1990

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, L’Oeuvre de C. Pissarro, 1904, no. 33

London, O'Hana Gallery, Summer Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture of the 19th and 20th Centuries, 1963, no. 34

Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son Art - Son Oeuvre, vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 301, catalogued p. 123; vol. II, no. 301, illustrated pl. 61 (with incorrect measurments)

More than any other Impressionist, Pissarro celebrated the values of rural life and the proximity of peasants to the land and the cycle of nature.  In this classic work of the mid-1870s, the recession of the terrain is indicated by alternating diagonal bands of vegetation and bare earth, a carefully orchestrated composition in which the reclining and kneeling figures echo the rhythms of nature. In October 1874 Pissarro and his family visited Ludovic Piette at Montfoucault where he completed twenty paintings, among which are his earliest depictions of peasants at work.

As Richard Brettell has observed : "As if in memoriam to Millet, Pissarro's peasants of the mid-1870s are painted in the tradition of the earlier master, solidly constructed, stable in their poses, and occupied in similar tasks. The women in the farm interiors, sewing in silence or spinning by the fire, are readily found in Millet's oeuvre, as are the peasant figures tending animals or bringing in the harvest. While it is clear that when Pissarro thought about the peasantry that he was to depict he had Millet very much in mind, and that he rarely painted subjects or poses unexplored by earlier painters of peasant life, his images are nonetheless different......By denying volume and monumentality to his figures, Pissarro also surrendered the peasant's individuality, and in this way Millet's tendency to isolate and aggrandize the peasant is reversed" (Richard Brettell, "Camille Pissarro: A Revision," Pissarro (exhibition catalogue) Hayward Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1981, pp. 27and 28).

The first owner of this picture was the celebrated opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830-1914) who was also one of the first collectors of the Impressionists. While it was in his collection, this painting was known as Les Côteaux d'Auvers. In addition to thirty-two works by Pissarro, Faure owned numerous works by Sisley, Monet and Manet.