Camille Pissarro

Julie Pissarro, Paris (inherited from the artist in 1904)
Ludovic-Rodolphe Pissarro, Paris (gifted from the above in 1921)
Sam Salz, New York (acquired from the above in March, 1954)
Jerome Crossman, Dallas (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owners

Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son Art – Son Oeuvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, no. 1239, catalogued p. 253; vol. II, illustrated pl. 242
Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, Paris, 2005, vol. III, no. 1430, illustrated p. 873

After completing a series of paintings on the Place Dauphine in Paris in the winter of 1902, Pissarro left the bustling city for the familiarly pastoral environs of Moret-sur-Loing. Taking residence in the cottage of his son Georges, the artist was frustrated with the first few months of Spring in the country as the weather was cold and rainy. He painted several interior scenes during these months, and longed for the warm weather to arrive so that he could paint the outdoor scenes that so inspired him. As he wrote in a letter to his wife Julie on May 17, 1902, "It's been windy, cold, and rainy ever since I arrived... but in spite of this setback, I have some reason to be pleased with my work. I found some peasants -- two women and an old man who were willing to pose for me at their place, I thus have two finished size-fifteen canvases and a third one in progress, and as soon as it's possible, one of the women will come and pose for me in the fields or under the trees right next to our house" (quoted in Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., p. 871).

The models to whom Pissarro refers are no doubt the figures that are the focus of Paysannes sous les arbres à Moret. The artist places his figures on a stone wall that runs through the forest. The horizontal line of the wall is echoed by the high horizon line in the background. WIth his masterful Impressionist brushstrokes, Pissarro creates a harmonious relationship between the figures and their environment. As the present work demonstrates, Pissarro drew endless inspiration from the peasant paintings of Millet (Fig. 1). Unlike Millet, however, Pissarro does not imbue these figures with monumentality but instead presents them in effortless dialogue with the rural landscape. As Richard Brettell explains, "While it is clear that when Pissarro thought about 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.27-28)

Figure 1 Jean-Francois Millet, Shepherdess Seated in the Shade, 1872, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Robert Dawson Evans Collection