Garden of Les Mathurins at Pontoise

The Stage Coach at Louveciennes
1870

Musee d'Orsay

Le verger (The Orchard)
1872
Oil on linen, 45.1 x 54.9 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Entrance to the Village of Voisins
1872

Gelee blanche (Hoarfrost)
1873
Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Les chataigniers a Osny (The Chestnut Trees at Osny)
1873
Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm
Private collection, New Jersey

Village Path
1875

Rudolphe Staechelin Foundation, Basel

The Red Roofs
1877
Oil on canvas, 54.5 x 65.6 cm
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

This painting is certainly one of Pissarro's masterpieces and an illustration of some of the essential aims of Impressionism. It gives a dual sensation--of truth to a particular region and aspect of nature so exactly realized that the spectator seems transported to the scene; and of color that, while creating this effect, has a vibration and lyrical excitement of its own. Pissarro has been described as an unequal painter but if this was from one standpoint a shortcoming it had also an advantage in enabling him to attain exceptional heights from time to time. The low tones of his Orchard at Pontoise might lead one to think of him as one confined by a particular mood or capacity of vision yet in The Red Roofs, painted in the same year, the low tones are exchanged for brilliance of light, the grave utterance of the rural philosopher turns into song.

The effect can be appreciated without analysis but it is enlightening as to his method and general approach to consider the picture in relation to the advice he gave at a later date to a young painter, Louis Le Bail, whose unpublished notes of conversation with Pissarro were summarized by John Rewald in his History of Impressionism: `Do not define too closely the outlines of things; it is the brushstroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing'. A look at this painting shows how Pissarro made this his own practice. `Don't work bit by bit but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere with brushstrokes of the right color and value...' This has an important bearing on the color harmony so splendidly carried out here. Color is not localized but is picked up like a melody in various parts of the canvas--the blue of the sky in the blue of doors and shadows, the red of the roofs in field and foreground earth--so that all comes into happy relation.

Landscape at Chaponval
1880

Musee d'Orsay

The Shepherdess (Young Peasant Girl with a Stick)
1881
Oil on canvas, 81 x 64.7 cm
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Peasant Girl Drinking her Coffee
1881
Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 54.8 cm
The Art Institute of Chicago

Haymakers Resting
1891
Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.3 cm
McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX

Le Pont-Neuf: un matin d'hiver

Painted by Camille Pissarro near the end of his life, The Pont Neuf: A Winter Morning carries the vision of the French Impressionists into the twentieth century. The artist is said to have painted it from the window of his apartment on the Ile de la Cite in Paris.

The painting poignantly contrasts the momentary effects of a winter sunrise with the lasting monuments of the city. The bare tree branches, the paving stones, and the distant buildings are briefly touched by the still-hidden sun, which warms and softens the gray chill with a suffused glow. As people go about their early-morning business and the river Seine flows strongly but calmly by, everything is dappled with pink or red lights and blue shadows or reflections from the sky.

The unusually pristine condition of this painting, on a canvas that has never been relined, provides a rare opportunity to appreciate the textured surface, which carries an air of spontaneity for all its analytical craft.

La Foire a Dieppe, matin, soleil
1901
Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 81.5 cm
Formerly collection Otto Krebs, Holzdorf

La Foire a Dieppe, matin, soleil – detail
1901
Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 81.5 cm
Formerly collection Otto Krebs, Holzdorf