.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Camille Pissarro catalogue raisonné being prepared by Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise, is an exciting addition to the artist's paintings from Camille Pissarro's classic Pontoise period. Pissarro's life and work are closely associated with Pontoise. He lived there between 1866 and 1868 and again from 1872 to 1882 but it is the paintings between 1872 and 1874 that some of his masterpieces belong, as great in their way, suggests Richard R. Brettell, as 'Corot's work from his first trips to Italy or to Monet's landscapes from the late 1860s' (R.Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise, The painter in a landscape, London, 1990, p. 151).
Dated 1874, there is little doubt that L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise was executed before the first Impressionist Exhibition in May 1874 and prior to Pissarro's departure to Montfoucault, stylistically placing this work at the apogée of the Pontoise period. Indeed in composition, palette and atmosphere L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise can be closely related to Pissarro's important landscape of 1873, Gelée blanche now housed in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (fig. 1; P&V 203).
Both winter landscapes, L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise and Gelée blanche share a palette, whose earth tones are enlivened by various purples, yellows, pinks, and pale oranges, which can be compared to the late landscape palette of Turner. But as Brettell writes, the influence of Monet and Turner are 'subsumed by the overwhelmingly Corotesque quality of Pissaro's art. His compositions, his intimacy of observations, his love of small-scale value gradations observed in complicated arrangements of form, and his insistently geometrical compositions owe their most profound debt to Corot, the greatest French landscape painter of the nineteenth century ibid., p. 151).
As with the Musée d'Orsay picture L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise is composed of small-scale patches of light and short brush strokes so often associated with depicting movement, and therefore, with Impressionism. Divided by the central road with a focus point on the horse and cart in the middle distance the compostion is balanced with the line of trees on the right with the gently rising slope and copse of trees on the left. 'The style of the Pontoise period shows a balance between construction and sensation that Pissarro never again achieved' (Ibid, p. 153).
L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise, is an exciting addition to the artist's paintings from Camille Pissarro's classic Pontoise period. Pissarro's life and work are closely associated with Pontoise. He lived there between 1866 and 1868 and again from 1872 to 1882 but it is the paintings between 1872 and 1874 that some of his masterpieces belong, as great in their way, suggests Richard R. Brettell, as 'Corot's work from his first trips to Italy or to Monet's landscapes from the late 1860s' (R.Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise, The painter in a landscape, London, 1990, p. 151).
Dated 1874, there is little doubt that L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise was executed before the first Impressionist Exhibition in May 1874 and prior to Pissarro's departure to Montfoucault, stylistically placing this work at the apogée of the Pontoise period. Indeed in composition, palette and atmosphere L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise can be closely related to Pissarro's important landscape of 1873, Gelée blanche now housed in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (fig. 1; P&V 203).
Both winter landscapes, L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise and Gelée blanche share a palette, whose earth tones are enlivened by various purples, yellows, pinks, and pale oranges, which can be compared to the late landscape palette of Turner. But as Brettell writes, the influence of Monet and Turner are 'subsumed by the overwhelmingly Corotesque quality of Pissaro's art. His compositions, his intimacy of observations, his love of small-scale value gradations observed in complicated arrangements of form, and his insistently geometrical compositions owe their most profound debt to Corot, the greatest French landscape painter of the nineteenth century ibid., p. 151).
As with the Musée d'Orsay picture L'allée de pommiers près d'Osny, Pontoise is composed of small-scale patches of light and short brush strokes so often associated with depicting movement, and therefore, with Impressionism. Divided by the central road with a focus point on the horse and cart in the middle distance the compostion is balanced with the line of trees on the right with the gently rising slope and copse of trees on the left. 'The style of the Pontoise period shows a balance between construction and sensation that Pissarro never again achieved' (Ibid, p. 153).