Camille Pissarro

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired by August 25, 1891)
Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris
Joseph Durand-Ruel, Rome (by 1901)
Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris (by 1937)
M. Fleming (acquired from the above on December 23, 1937)
O'Hana Gallery, London
Mrs. E. Ives Bartholet, New York
Acquired from the above on November 17, 1971

Galerie und Sammler, Zurich, January-February 1938, no. 1, illustrated
Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son Art – Son Oeuvre, vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 671, catalogued p. 176; vol. II, illustrated pl. 139 

In the spring of 1884 Pissarro and his family left Osny and settled in Éragny-sur-Epte, a small village in Normandy near Gisors.  The countryside surrounding Éragny, devoid of modernized farming and industrial imagery, provided the artist with the perfect setting in which to pursue one of his favorite themes, namely the depiction of rural life.  Moreso than his fellow Impressionist painters Monet and Sisley, who were also renowned for their landscapes, Pissarro excelled in depicting fields, farmer's markets and other rustic scenes of the French countryside.  The choice of subject was particularly significant at the end of the 19th century, when France was rapidly industrializing and agricultural mechanization became increasingly at odds with the customs of rural life.  Pissarro's great landscapes of the 1880s pay tribute to the beauty of the land, free from the encroachment of urbanization.

According to Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel, between 1880 and 1885, Pissarro's paintings underwent a notable change.  They write,  "...there is less emphasis on recession and spatial depth.  The basic elements -- foreground, middle distance and background -- tend to be flattened, so that the design is read upwards as a series of horizontal bands" (Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel, Camille Pissarro, London, 1981, p. 116).