Camille Pissarro

George Manzana-Pissarro (the artist's son, by descent in 1904; sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 25th June 1906, lot 135
Sale: Guy Loudmer, Palais d'Orsay, Paris, 9th June 1977, lot 58
Purchased at the above sale by the family of the present owner

Paris, Galerie Knoedler, L'Héritage de Delacroix, 1964, no. 9

Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro: son art - son œuvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, no. 609, catalogued p. 167; vol. II, no. 609, illustrated pl. 126
Charles Kunstler, Camille Pissarro, Milan, 1974, illustrated p. 77
Christopher Lloyd, "Camille Pissarro and Rouen", Studies on Camille Pissarro, London & New York, 1987, p. 93, note 59
Janine Bailly-Hertzberg, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, Paris, 1980, no. 180, p. 239; no. 181, p. 240
Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, Milan, 2005, vol. III, no. 731, illustrated p. 487 

Pissarro’s urban aesthetic and his fascination with urban movement is masterfully captured in the present work, Richard Brettell wrote: '… Pissarro thrived on a high level of pictorial and social energy in his urban paintings. The population of most is quite large and the exercise of describing his figures is fascinating. The throngs on the bridges of Rouen or around the basin of Le Havre are almost uncountable, and the relatively unpopulated winter view of the Square du Vert-Galant or even the Avenue de l’Opéra in Paris can be interpreted only in the context of the populated norm. Traffic, motion, work, transport, exchange, unloading, loading, moving, buying, selling, walking, riding – these activities dominate Pissarro’s urban views, and the architecture and urban space simply frame this human spectacle' (R. Brettell, in  The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro’s Series Paintings (exhibition catalogue), Dallas Museum of Art (and travelling), 1992-93, p. xxi).

In 1883 Camille Pissarro was staying in Rouen with his friend and patron Eugène Murer. He enthusiastically set about painting 13 works in just a few months and it was perhaps the change of scenery that led Pissarro to approach a new urban theme of painting seen for one of the first times in the present work. This painting is a forerunner to some of the most important and emblematic works of the late Impressionist period, and shows Pissarro experimenting with a new subject that was to characterise the last generation of avant garde 19th Century artists. Here the novel composition stands out; it is in the style of a captured moment, almost photographic in its depiction of an everyday  town going about its business. Pissarro is as much challenging the standard subjects of painting (ie. landscapes, still lifes or nudes) as he is adapting the way in which paint is applied to the canvas. It is a work teetering on the edge of modernism in its frank portrayal of ubiquitous 19th Century urban life.