Lucien Pissarro 1863-1944

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Description

Lucien Pissarro
Soleil Couchant dans les Pins, Le Brusq
signed with monogram and dated 1925
oi on canvas
46 by 38cm., 18 by 15in.

Provenance

The Artist, from who acquired direct by Lawrence Haward, 1936

Exhibited

London, Leicester Galleries, Lucien Pissarro, 1927, no.20;
Manchester, Charles A. Jackson's Gallery, Lucien Pissarro, 1928, no.19;
London, Art Exhibitions Bureau, and probably toured to Birkenhead, Manchester, Belfast, Gateshead and Rochdale, A Travelling Exhibition of Oils, Watercolours and Drawings by Lucien Pissarro, 1935-6, no.7.

Literature

Anne Thorold, A Catalogue of the Oil Paintings of Lucien Pissarro, Athelney Books, London, p.182, no.410.

Catalogue Note

Painted in May 1925, the present work comes from a group of canvases produced by Lucien at Le Brusq, a coastal village located in Var between Marseilles and Toulon, on the small peninsula south of Bandol (see lot 45, painted the previous month). The sun is seen setting over a distinctive rocky promontory across the curve of the bay from Le Brusq: this outcrop can also be seen as La Pointe de Cougoussa - Soleil Couchant (1925, coll. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and is correctly known as the Pointe de Cougosset. The latter work was painted first, in March, and the original idea has clearly been worked and improved upon in the intervening months. The vista is given a greater depth here by the addition of the foreground pines, which lend a tracking diagonal to balance the shoreline and mountains beyond. These trees are further employed by Lucien as an unusal device through which to filter soft rays of heavily impastoed lemon and white, and the artist demonstrates here his particular facility in meticulous capture of a fleeting time of day.