Camille Pissarro

Mary Cassatt (acquired from the artist)

By descent from the above to the present owner

Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Critical Catalogue of Paintings, vol. II, Milan, 2005, no. 396, illustrated p. 296

In 1874 the Impressionists made their debut in Paris, exhibiting paintings in the style that would come to dominate the avant-garde over the next decade.  During this time, one of their founders, Camille Pissarro, was diligently working around his home in Pontoise, France (about twenty-five miles northwest of Paris).  Pontoise was a multifaceted town with a center marketplace and a rural district on the outskirts.  Pissarro painted these urban and rural settings, as he was intent to capture the sensations he felt among his surroundings.  The artist, like his fellow Impressionists, painted en plein air -- on an easel in the midst of the landscape, without any preparatory sketches.  He painted, “entirely from observation of nature in the open air, to begin and finish a picture outdoors in natural light” (Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 117). 

In 1875, Pissarro executed Paysage vallonné en hiver a scene of a hilly landscape, with lush green, earth-toned colored hills in the foreground and a soft blue coloration in the background sky.  The striking green colors on the low-lying hills were rendered using a brush and palette knife which magnifies the intensity of the colors.  Pissarro shows his zeal for experimentation of complex compositions as he moves beyond a simple horizontal plane and renders an image with multilayered hills and magnificent aerial perspective.  Moreover, the artist includes a small cabin and trees which gives the work a narrative element and a greater dimension to the scene.     

This particular painting was owned by the American Impressionist, Mary Cassatt, and it has remained in her family for over a century.  Cassatt’s ownership of Paysage vallonné en hiver undoubtedly represents the strong friendship and mutual respect that the artists beheld for each other’s creativity and is a testament to Cassatt’s own admission that Pissarro“ excited her interests” (Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt, New York, 1987, p. 114).