La Récolte des pommes de terre, Pontoise

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The potato harvest
La Récolte des pommes de terre, Pontoise
Camille Pissarro , 1874
Oil on canvas
33 x 41.3 cm
Unknown owner

La Récolte des pommes de terre, Pontoise (German: The Potato Harvest ) is the title of an Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) from 1874, which was created in Pontoise , where several artists lived at that time. It belongs to the phase in Pissarro's oeuvre in which he experimented with a new kind of painting technique that was supposed to create new effects with a rather raw paint application with a painting knife instead of a brush. Today the picture is in an unknown private possession.

description

The picture shows an agricultural scene in which six people, four women and two men, can be seen in the foreground harvesting potatoes in a field in the lowland of the Oise . In times of pre-industrial agriculture, potatoes were harvested by hand. On the one hand, people are shown bending over to get the potatoes out of the already loosened soil, and on the other hand, people filling the harvested material into baskets and sacks. It is a kind of modern division of labor in contrast to traditional agriculture, as can be seen in the pictures by Jean-François Millet . The middle distance of the picture is dominated by an ensemble of farmhouses, to the left and further back a village can be seen. The topography of the terrain is not exactly reproduced in the painting, so the hill was raised to serve as a background for the figures. These appear more arranged than drawn from nature, and the theme of the work is reminiscent of Millet's painting. Pissarro applied the strong, bright colors in a partially irregular layer with a painting or palette knife, as Gustave Courbet used , albeit as a surface smoothing tool for his realism . However, Pissarro used this technique to create relief-like structures, depending on the color. He anticipated the painting style for landscapes of later artists such as Paul Gauguin , Vincent van Gogh and the artists of Fauvism . The pieces appear as if they were placed on a chessboard.

The Angelus chime by Jean-François Millet

The theme of the potato harvest had already inspired Millet for one of his most famous paintings, L'Angélus ( Musée d'Orsay , Paris), which only depicts two people. Pissarro probably knew Millet's picture from Paul Durand-Ruel's gallery. He wrote to his friend Théodore Duret on December 11, 1874 about his new painting technique, and Duret encouraged him to continue working on the subject. Pissarro created many similar images over the next three years. However, contemporary art criticism repeatedly misunderstood them and referred them to Millet rather than to the works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Claude Monet and Edgar Degas, which were then considered modern .

The work is carried out using the technique of oil on canvas and has the dimensions 33 × 41.3 cm. In the catalog raisonné published in 2005 ( initiated by Daniel Wildenstein ) it has the number 360 , in the catalog raisonné from 1939 it is listed under number 295 .

Provenance

Provenance : The painting comes from the artist's estate and first came to a private collection in London via Lucien Pissarro , Camille Pissarro's eldest son , where it remained until around 1940. In 1995, it was auctioned at Christie's and passed into the possession of the current anonymous owner for $ 1,273,000.

Exhibitions

  • 1910: Large art exhibition in the " Kunsthalle Bremen " (February / March)
  • 1911: Pictures by Camille Pissarro, London in the "Stafford Gallery" (October)
  • 1914: Exposition rétrospective d'oeuvres de Camille Pissarro in the "Galerie Manzi-Joyant" in Paris (January / February)
  • 1931/1932: Oil Paintings by Camille Pissarro (June 1931 to November 1932) among others in the Tate Gallery in London, in the "City Museum and Art Gallery" in Birmingham , in the "Castle and Art Gallery" in Nottingham , in the " War Memorial Buildings "in Stockport , in the" Mappin Art Gallery "in Sheffield , in the" City Art Gallery "in Leeds or in the" Art Gallery "in Northampton
  • 1950: A Camille Pissarro Exhibition in the "Matthiesen Gallery" in London (June / July)
  • 1951: Festival of Jewish Arts in the "McLellan Galleries" in Glasgow (February)
  • Coronation Exhibition of Paintings in the "Ben Uri Gallery" in London (also incorrectly called the Collection of Lucien Pissarro )
  • 1955: Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley at Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd. in London (June / July)
  • 1968: Pissarro in England at Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd. in London (June / July)
  • 1974: Impressionism: Its Masters, Its Precursors and its Influence in Britain at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (February – April)
  • 1984: Rétrospective Camille Pissarro in the "Isetan Museum of Art" in Tokyo or in the " Municipal Museum of Art " in Kyoto (March-July)
  • 1998: Camille Pissarro in the " Palazzo dei Diamanti " in Ferrara (February-May)
  • 2003/2004: Entre ciel et terre: Camille Pissarro et les peintres de la vallée de l'Oise in the " Städtische Galerie " in Böblingen , in the "Musée Tavet-Delacour" in Pontoise , in the "Mitsukoshi Gallery" in Tokyo, in "Onomichi Municipal Museum" in Hiroshima and in the "Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art" in Shuzuoka (September 2003 to June 2004)
  • 2005/2006: Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865–1885 in the " Museum of Modern Art " in New York City , in the " County Museum of Art " in Los Angeles and in the " Musée d'Orsay " in Paris (June 2005 to May 2006)

literature

  • Camille Pissarro. Works on View at Leeds Art Gallery. In: The Yorkshire Post. dated July 4, 1932.
  • E. Newton: Rochdale Art Gallery, Paintings by Pissarro. In: The Rochdale Observer. dated October 29, 1932.
  • Städtische Galerie, Böblingen (ed.): Camille Pissarro et les peintres de la vallée de l'Oise. Entre ciel et terre. (= Camille Pissarro and the painters of the Oise valley. Between heaven and earth. ) Somogy, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-85056-682-9 .
  • J. Pissarro, C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts: Pissarro. Catalog critique des peintures, Volume II. Skira, Paris / Milan 2005, ISBN 88-7624-525-1 , p. 274, no. 360.
  • Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro's people Prestel, Munich / London 2011, ISBN 978-3-7913-5118-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L'Angélus (Jean-François Millet - The Angelus Ringing ) on musee-orsay.fr
  2. ↑ 1874 - La récolte des pommes de terre on kerdonis.fr (French)
  3. ^ Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro's people Prestel, Munich / London 2011, p. 132 ff.
  4. ↑ Catalog of Works (2005) Vol. III . 2005.
  5. ^ Ludovic Rodolphe Pissarro , Lionello Venturi : Camille Pissarro. Son Art - son œuvre. A catalog raisonné. 1632 illustrations, Paul Rosenberg 1939.
  6. ↑ a b Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) La récolte des pommes de terre, Pontoise. on christies.com