Girl lying in the grass

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Girl lying in the grass, oil painting by Camille Pissarro
Le repos, paysanne couchée dans l'herbe
Camille Pissarro , 1882
Oil on canvas
64.5 × 78 cm
Kunsthalle , Bremen

Girl lying in the grass , or also girl lying on the grass slope, Pontoise (French original title: Le repos, paysanne couchée dans l'herbe, Pontoise ), is a painting by the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro from 1882. It was created and marked in Pontoise with three other similar works the turning point in his oeuvre from pure landscape painting to depicting people. It has been in the Kunsthalle Bremen since April 10, 1967 . The painting comes from the estate of the art collector Hugo Oelze, who died in 1967 .

description

The painting shows a young peasant woman who has laid down in the freshly mown, fragrant grass of a meadow. The woman's body forms a diagonal through the picture, dividing it into two areas. The scenery is bordered by a bright, horizontally running path that separates the cultivated land in the form of a meadow from the wild growth with bushes and trees in the background. In the days of not yet mechanized agriculture, meadows were mowed by hand with a scythe , which was always a strenuous activity. After mowing, the freshly cut grass was evenly distributed with a wooden rake so that it dries better. The woman, lying stretched out, has pulled her headscarf forward over her forehead to protect her eyes from the high midday sun and lies stretched out completely relaxed, her eyes slightly closed. Her work tool, the rake, can be seen on her right hand. Nothing disturbs this peaceful midday calm, the picture does not show any other people, animals or distracting elements. The completely relaxed human body in perfect rest is the main thing in this picture. The aging Pissarro always depicted his farm workers in simple, non-fashionable clothes, always without erotic implications, in contrast to the pastoral painting of the 18th century. He hired young women because they were beautiful, but not available to an urban exhibition audience, but self-determined and happy. This was in complete contrast to the prevailing view of what simple rural life should look like.

Pissarro's work is executed in the painting technique oil on canvas and has the landscape format 64.5 × 78 cm. The signature is on the lower left: C.Pissarro 82. Since 1967 it has had the inventory number 960-1967 / 8 of the Bremen Kunsthalle.

Exhibitions (selection)

Previous owner

After the Nazis seized power in 1933, many mostly Jewish owners were forced to sell their property for a price well below its value. The lawyer Hugo Oelze, who came from a Bremen merchant family, was one of those citizens who benefited from it and who were able to acquire paintings for their own art collection at low prices between 1933 and 1945. He had moved to Amsterdam in the 1920s and later helped the National Socialists assess the works of art confiscated there. He bequeathed many of his pictures to the Kunsthalle Bremen.

Provenance

Initially, the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris acquired the painting directly from Pissarro on May 30, 1882, where it remained until February 13, 1899. From there it came to the art dealer EJ van Wisselingh in Amsterdam (1929–1935) via the Bernheim-Jeune and Léon Morot gallery around 1929. Then it was temporarily from 1935 to 1938 at MH Stevenson Southam in Ottawa before it came back to the van Wisselingh art dealership until 1940. It was privately owned from 1940 to 1950, and there is evidence that Hugo Oelze owned it from 1950 to 1967. On April 10, 1967, it came from his estate to the Kunsthalle Bremen.

literature

  • Joachim Pissarro , Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts: Pissarro. Critical Catalog of Paintings. 3 volumes. Wildenstein Institute Publications, Paris 2005, Volume 2. OCLC 644151612 , pp. 456f., No. 683.
  • Gerhard Gerkens , Ursula Heiderich: Catalog of the paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Kunsthalle Bremen. 2 volumes, Bremen 1973, OCLC 1303217 , p. 268, fig. 590.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 8. Sieste et petit somme. on sleep-in-arts.eu (PDF, p. 90.)
  2. ↑ a b Kunsthalle Bremen: A Question of Origin - Museum documents the state of research on the history of origin ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on radiobremen.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radiobremen.de
  3. ^ Richard R. Brettell: Pissarros's People , Prestel, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7913-5118-6 , pp. 171ff.
  4. ↑ Girl lying in the grass, 1882 aufartefact.kunsthalle-bremen.de
  5. ↑ Camille Pissarro - Girl lying in the grass, 1882. on kunsthalle-bremen.de