Study of a peasant girl digging up

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Etude de paysanne en plein air (paysanne bêchant) (Camille Pissarro)
Etude de paysanne en plein air (paysanne bêchant)
Camille Pissarro , 1882
Oil on canvas
65 × 54 cm
Privately owned

Study of a peasant girl digging up ( Etude de paysanne en plein air (paysanne bêchant) ) is the title of a painting by Camille Pissarro from 1882, which, along with three other similar works, marked the turning point in Pissarro's oeuvre from pure landscape painting to the large representation of people marked. Today it is in an anonymous private possession.

Image description and classification

A young peasant woman with a dark face , her black hair partially hidden under a brightly colored headscarf, dressed in a blue blouse and a skirt with an apron , pauses in her activity of digging up a garden bed with a spade in the spring so that Pissarro can sketch her . It stands in the foreground of the garden, which is divided into the background by four almost horizontal lines that delimit the beds. Berry bushes and freshly planted fruit trees form the background of the painting. At the back, slightly to the left of the center, there is another human figure, which is in the foreground in no interacting relationship with the figure, but forms a counterpart from a compositional point of view. It is a male figure with a yellow straw hat, who is holding a cloth over his shoulder on the left with seeds in it, which can be concluded in comparison with other pictures of Pissarro about country people in that creative phase. In pre-industrial agriculture, large areas of grain were sown with sweeping hand movements. The man is shown from behind, walking away, the peasant woman in profile. she is the main thing in the picture. Her posture is slightly bent, her back, which is already slightly rounded from agricultural work, is clearly visible. Her doubtful, pausing pose with the serious expression on her face, the strong hands that grasp the handle of the spade and the unstrained right foot that is not ready to drive the spade into the dark garden soil give the impression of incipient exhaustion.

The early 1880s were a time of transition in Pissarro's work from pure landscape painting to depicting people. He changed his previous painting technique with pronounced long brushstrokes, still reminiscent of Paul Cézanne , to a more dabbing technique. It was the time of experimentation and the realization that there was a higher reality besides the optical.

The picture of the Paysanne bêchant is one of three paintings in which Pissarro depicts working peasant women. Contemporary critics compared these pictures with works by Jean-François Millet , who painted many rural people. In 1882, after an exhibition in the Paysanne, the art historian and critic Ernest Chesneau described Pissarro as an equal and legitimate successor to Millet. Others, however, saw the depictions of farmers in a more differentiated manner. Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote in 1882 that Pissarro had created something completely new, detached from Millet's way of thinking. But Camille Pissarro avoided comparisons with Millet and wrote to his son Lucien that he paints his country people without the wrong size, just as he sees them .

The picture measures 65 × 54 cm in portrait format. It is executed using the painting technique oil on canvas , Pissarro's signature is on the lower left (C.Pissarro. 82).

Provenance and exhibitions

The painting was initially owned by the artist and, after his death, with his wife Julie until 1904. After her death in 1921 it came to his daughter Jeanne Pissarro-Bonin. Then it was in Paris with a Maurice Payen . From December 1923 it was part of the Paul Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris. In 1924 it came to the Bremen graphic cabinet of Wolfgang Werner, then to Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin. He sold it to the textile entrepreneur Richard Semmel around 1930 . From his possession, the picture was auctioned in June 1933 at the Amsterdam auction house Frederik Muller & Cie. The picture in the Moos Gallery in Geneva survived the Second World War. After 1945 it came to Jacques Lindon in New York, after which it was in a private collection in Monaco and was acquired by an anonymous buyer on June 27, 1977 at auction at Sotheby’s . On December 4, 1990, Sotheby's sold the painting to the New York gallery Daniel B. Grossman. She sold it in 1991 to the collection of Joan Beverly Kroc . The auction house Christie's auctioned the painting on May 2, 2006 in New York for $ 1.8 million to the Richard Green Gallery in London. On November 7, 2007, it landed back at Sotheby's and now fetched a price of $ 2,057,000, paid for by an anonymous buyer.

The picture was shown in various exhibitions:

  • Galerie Nunès et Fiquet, Paris: Exposition de la collection de Madame Veuve C. Pissarro , May / June 1921
  • Musée de l'Orangerie , Paris: Exposition Centenaire de la naissance de Camille Pissarro , February / March 1930
  • Galerie Moos, Geneva: Art Français , June / July 1939
  • Wildenstein & Co., New York: Camille Pissarro: His Place in Art , October / November 1945
  • Graphisches Kabinett Wolfgang Werner, Bremen: 50 Years of the Graphisches Kabinett , 1970

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in a Landscape. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1990, p. 184.
  2. ^ Joachim Pissarro : Camille Pissarro. New York, 1993, p. 156f.
  3. ↑ LOT 6 - Paysanne bêchant at Sotheby's (PDF)
  4. ↑ Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) - Etude de paysanne en plein air, bêchant at Christie's