American & European Art

We wish to thank Dr. Joachim Pissarro for confirming the authenticity of the present lot, which will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of drawings and watercolors by Camille Pissarro.

Provenance:

Collection of Merrill Chase, Chicago

Private Collection, acquired from the above, by 1981

Bears on the frame verso certificate no. 4585, issued from Paule Cailac, dated March 15, 1980.

Lot note:

Camille Pissarro lived in the small village of Éragny from 1884 until his death in 1903. During those years, Pissarro made numerous paintings and watercolors of the village and its surrounding countryside. During the early 1890s Pissarro showed a renewed interest in climatic occurrences such as fog, hoar frost, mist, the changing seasons, and the different effects of the sun, which he had first essayed during the 1870s. Often Pissarro inscribed his watercolors of this period with the date and details about the weather and/or time of day, as he did on this occasion with the inscription Eragny - Juin 91.

Éragny is a watercolor, a medium favored by Pissarro from the second half of the 1880s onwards. Watercolors enabled Pissarro to give free expression to those sensations he experienced before nature and at the same time to produce works quickly and were easier to sell. The artist often evokes the powerful qualities he found in watercolor in his correspondence. He said to his eldest son, for instance: “Il ne faut chercher que des sensations directes et instantanées. Rappelle-toi que l’aquarelle est un bon moyen pour aider la mémoire, surtout dans les effets fugitifs; l’aquarelle rend si bien l’impalpable, la puissance, la finesse” (translation: You should only try to reach your direct sensations of the moment, especially when it comes to capturing fugitive effects. Watercolor translates so well the intangible and powerful finesse of the instant.” (Letter to Lucien, 13 May 1891. Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, ed. J. Bailly-Herzberg, Paris, 1988, vol. 3, p. 81).

By 1891, Pissarro had in mind to organize an exhibition of his recent watercolors of which he was quite proud. Pissarro wrote, “J’ai fait monter sur papier libre toutes mes aquarelles, que je mets en séries dans des cartons, afin de ne pas les laisser traîner. Si je pouvais les exposer? … J’en ai cent soixante et une. Georges trouve qu’elles sont beaucoup plus belles que ma peinture” (translation: I have mounted all my watercolors, and I am arranging them in portfolios so that they do not get scattered around. What if I could exhibit them? … After all, I have 161. Georges [the artist’s second son] finds them more beautiful than my paintings.”) (Letter to Lucien, 14 January 1891, Bailly-Herzberg, p. 21; Rewald, 1943, p. 146).

This particular work appears to be most closely related to another watercolor by Pissarro titled Effet de Soleil of c. 1890, illustrated in Marie-José Pellé’s book “Vert Pissarro…” Impressions de Normandie et d’ailleurs. The two watercolors are compositionally, technically, and stylistically similar. They appear to depict the sun shining over the meadows surrounding the village. Another watercolor depicting the sun over the meadows of Éragny in a similar way and with the same title as the current watercolor, Éragny, was sold at Bonham's, London (October 10, 2019, Lot 64). In these watercolors, Pissarro appears to be studying the effects of the sun. By using different angles the artist often played with various viewpoints. Pissarro made several beautiful watercolors of motifs at Éragny during the second half of the 1880s and 1890s partly as an antidote to the slow, methodical and disciplined pointillist style he was using for his paintings at that time.