Camille Pissarro

Mme Louis Latouche, Paris
Thence by descent to the present owner

Executed on silk laid down on card, which is in turn laid down on board. Apart from some light undulations to the silk, mainly to the lower left and lower right edge (not visible when framed) and intrinsic to the laying down process, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate although the pastels are more subtle in the original.
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As early as 1879, in the fourth Impressionist Exhibition, Pissarro exhibited twelve designs for fans. This new direction in his work, attributed partly to the influence of Edgar Degas, can also be placed in the larger context of the japonisme movement, in which many segments of the Parisian avant-garde found inspiration in the Japanese prints and decorative arts that began to be widely circulated in the 1860s.

Christopher Lloyd writes of this body of work: "For Pissarro the adoption of the fan as an art form came at a critical time, namely the close of the 1870s. To a certain extent the fan may have assisted Pissarro in his search for compositional unity. The emphasis that had to be placed on the two corners of the fan meant that figures were given prominence against the background. Landscapes and horizon lines in the upper half of the fan either have a horizontal emphasis or else echo the curvature of the fan itself. Whilst many of the compositions are reworkings of earlier works, Pissarro also showed considerable originality in this format. He sought different atmospheric effects in compositions of seasonal import, but at the same time did not spurn more 'modern' themes, such as the railway bridge at Pointoise and the port at Rouen'' (Christopher Lloyd, Pissarro, London, 1980, p. 235).

The subject of the present work, that of labourers working in the countryside, relates it to the paintings of Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon painters. While his landscapes depict the natural beauty of the French countyside, Pissarro also chooses to examine the complexity of space and perspective in a manner that was rare among the artists who explored this subject in the past.

As Richard Brettell has observed: "As if in memoriam to Millet, Pissarro's peasants of the mid-1870s are painted in the tradition of the earlier master, solidly constructed, stable in their poses, and occupied in similar tasks. The women in the farm interiors, sewing in silence or spinning by the fire, are readily found in Millet's oeuvre, as are the peasant figures tending animals or bringing in the harvest. While it is clear that when Pissarro thought about the 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).

The first owner of the present work was Madame Latouche, whose husband Louis was a painter who exhibited with the Impressionists. Madame Latouche was a colour merchant, and from her shop on the Rue Laffitte she sold paints and canvases to Pissarro, Gauguin and Monet, among others.