Woman Pushing a Wheelbarrow, Éragny 1890 PDR875
Camille Pissarro is in the spotlight again — this time at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Sale to be held 25 March. In fact, a detail of the painting is featured on their catalogue cover. Early last month, Sotheby’s featured a glorious Pissarro painting of Boulevard Montmartre on the cover of their Impressionist sale catalogue. The interest in Pissarro’s work is obviously increasing among collectors and auction houses. His work is finally getting the attention it deserves.
This sun drenched painting of a scene in Éragny was made just after Pissarro turned away from pointilism, the dot technique that had consumed his energy for several years. The Christie’s catalogue describes the change in Pissarro’s technique this way: “However, rather than using the ‘stifling’ dot, as in his neoimpressionist phase, he uses a much looser, crisscrossing technique, by which he interweaves his brushstrokes, having fractured and divided the marks of paint into a more complex, but also much freer, and livelier pictorial surface.”
On Christie’s website, you can look at this painting up close which allows you to see the tiny brushstrokes and multitude of colors he used to create the image. The subject could not be more “down to earth” than this—a woman pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with manure to the pile at the edge of the field in the bright sunlight. The hedge row draws a slight diagonal to the horizon line and the steep pitched roof and gigantic tree lift our eyes to the fluffy clouds.
Pissarro made another painting of the same place in Éragny, but the manure pile is replaced with clusters of wild flowers. The same tree and roof appear, and a woman (looks like the same one) is walking with a goat in the opposite direction. This wonderful painting “Woman and Goat at Eragny” (PDR 874) is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Woman and Goat at Éragny, 1889 PDR 874
PISSARRO’S PLACES IN NEW YORK
DOBBS FERRY AND HARRISON
YOU’RE INVITED
Please join me March 22 at 2 pm for a slide-lecture based on my book PISSARRO’S PLACES, Dobbs Ferry Public Library, 55 Main Street, 914-693-6614
Or March 23 at 2 pm for a slide-lecture based on my book PISSARRO’S PLACES, Harrison Public Library, 2 Bruce Avenue, 914-835-8324
PISSARRO’S PLACES is available on the book’s website: http://www.pissarrosplaces.com and on Amazon.
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