Camille Pissarro

MARCHÉ À LA VOLAILLE, GISORS 1830 - 1903 signed with the initials C.P. and inscribed Gisors (lower right) watercolour and wash on paper 20.5 by 16.2cm., 8 by 6 3/8 in. Executed circa 1889. This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings by Camille Pissarro currently in preparation by Dr Joachim Pissarro. Julian & Leila Sobin, U.S.A. (sale: Sotheby's, London, 8th December 1998, lot 302 A) Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

LE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE, BRUME DU MATIN Camille Pissarro 1830 - 1903 signed C.Pissarroand dated 97 (lower left) oil on canvas 54 by 65.5cm. 21 1/4 by 25 3/4 in. Painted in 1897. Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist on 11th May 1897) Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (acquired from the above in 1926) Madeleine de Brecey (granddaughter of Paul Durand-Ruel; acquired in 1949) Sam Salz, New York Mrs Etta E. Steinberg (acquired from the above in May 1956. Sold: Christie\’s, New York, 19th May 1981, lot 335) Purchased at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Œuvres récentes de Camille Pissarro, 1898, no. 19 Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Tableaux de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir et Sisley, 1899, no. 65 Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, 1904, no. 105 Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Pissarro, 1908, no. 22 Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Tableaux et gouaches par Camille Pissarro, 1910, no. 10 (probably) Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art, C. Pissarro, 1936, no. 13 (probably) New York, Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, Paris, 1943 Saint Louis, City Art Museum (on loan 1975-80) Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art & London, Royal Academy of Arts, The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro\’s Series Paintings, 1992-93, no. 46, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (titled Boulevard Montmartre: Morning, Sunlight and Mist) Literature Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi,Camille Pissarro, son art - son œuvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, no. 990, catalogued p. 218; vol. II, no. 990, illustrated pl. 199 (titled Boulevard Montmartre, matin, brouillard ensoleillé) Art News, April 1956, illustrated p. 75 (titled Boulevard Montmartre) Kathleen Adler, \‘Camille Pissarro. City and Country in the 1980s\’, in Christopher Lloyd (ed.), Studies on Camille Pissarro, London & New York, 1987, mentioned p. 113 Apollo, London, November 1992, fig. II, illustrated in colour p. 274 (titled Boulevard Montmartre: Morning, Sunlight and Mist) Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts,Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, Paris, 2005, vol. III, no. 1162, illustrated in colour p. 730 \‘I have begun my series of Boulevards. I have a splendid motif which I am going to explore under all possible effects.\’ Camille Pissarro, letter to his son Georges Manzana-Pissarro, 13th February 1897 Le Boulevard Montmartre, brume du matin, painted in 1897, is an outstanding work from one of the most important series of Pissarro\’s urban views. The excitement and spectacle of the city at the fin-de-siècle are brilliantly evoked by the artist\’s handling of paint and the elegant composition. The remarkable scope and variety of the Boulevard Montmartre series reveals Pissarro\’s approach to the systematic exploration of a series of views of the same subject. Focused upon a single compositional device – the magnificent procession of the Boulevard Montmartre – the artist thoroughly investigated the different atmospheric conditions of the street. This variety is illustrated by two distinct determinations - the weather and the activity represented. Thus there are festive afternoons as well as comparatively tranquil ones, sparsely populated streets in winter and conversely busy scenes, as well as a view of the street at night. Joachim Pissarro wrote: \‘As his most systematic and homogenous compositions, and his most clearly focused series, as well as one of his most rapidly achieved, the boulevard Montmartre series addresses elementary issues inherent in serial procedures. While representing a single motif seen under different combinations of light, weather and seasonal change, Pissarro\’s approach to this series was capable of producing an infinite number of possibilities\’ (J. Pissarro in The Impressionist and the City: Pissarro's Series Paintings (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 60). The artist accomplished this triumphant series by working methodically for over two months at the window of his hotel room from dawn till dusk. Pissarro\’s series paintings of Paris in the late 1890s are amongst the supreme achievements of Impressionism, taking their place alongside Claude Monet\’s series of Rouen Cathedral, poplars and grainstacksand the later waterlilies. For an artist who throughout his earlier career was primarily celebrated as a painter of rural life rather than the urban environment, the Boulevard Montmartre, Gare Saint-Lazare and Jardin des Tuileries series confirmed his position as the preeminent painter of the City. However, Richard R. Brettellalso argues that in contrast to Monet\’s work, for Pissarro \‘no \“series\” is quite like another\’ and was not initially conceived to be hung together. \‘By contrast, it seems as though Pissarro \“tested the waters\” of urban view painting, found them temptingly warm and stayed in them less as a result of a grand design than because he was enjoying the experience. One senses little of the intense struggle to redefine painting that occupied Monet in his series. Rather, Pissarro appears almost to have been liberated by urban view painting\’ (R. R. Brettell in ibid., p. xv). On 8th February 1897 Pissarro wrote from Eragny to his son Lucien informing him of his return to the city: \‘I am returning to Paris again on the tenth, to do a series of the boulevard des Italiens. Last time I did several small canvases – about 13 x 10 inches – of the rue Saint-Lazare, effects of rain, snow, etc., with which Durand was very pleased. A series of paintings of the boulevards seems to him a good idea, and it will be interesting to overcome the difficulties. I engaged a large room at the Grand Hôtel de Russie, 1 rue Drouot, from which I can see the whole sweep of boulevards almost as far as the Porte Saint-Denis, anyway as far as the boulevard Bonne Nouvelle\’ (letter from the artist to his son, Lucien Pissarro, 8th February 1897, quoted in John Rewald & Lucien Pissarro (eds.), Camille Pissarro: Letters to his Son Lucien, Boston, 2002, p. 307). As part of the ambitious reforms Napoleon III introduced during the 1860s, Georges-Eugène Haussmann was charged with masterminding a radical reconfiguration of Paris. Many parts of the medieval city were razed to provide space for an extensive grid of straight roads, avenues and boulevards. The \‘Haussmannisation\’ of Paris which is celebrated today as the precursor to modern urban planning, met with admiration and scorn in equal measure at the time - not least because of the staggering 2.5 billion francs spent on the project. In another letter to his son Lucien, Pissarro extolled the artistic possibilities presented by the new urban landscape: \‘It may not be very aesthetic, but I\’m delighted to be able to have a go at Paris streets, which are said to be ugly, but are [in fact] so silvery, so bright, so vibrant with life […] they\’re so totally modern!\’ (letter from the artist to his son Lucien Pissarro, 15th December 1897, quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, op. cit., p. 728). These sentiments are also illustrated in the works of his contemporaries, such as Claude Monet and Gustave Caillebotte, whose views of Paris captured the grandeur and commotion of the modern city.

Description: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903) 5-1/2" x 4-1/2" image; 15" x 11-3/4" paper "Groupe de paysans (Group of Peasants)", ca. 1896. Chine coll é lithograph in black on Ingres de couleur paper, signed in pencil in the lower right, annoted no. 4 in pencil in the lower left corner, titled in pencil lower center, full margins, one of approximately only 11 lifetime impressions, matted and framed under glass, overall 19-1/4" x 15-1/4". Deltoid 165.

Portrait of a boy. 1852–1855. Unsigned. Oil on canvas. 37×30 cm. The painting has been examined first hand by the Wildenstein Institute, and the work will become part of the forthcoming \“Pissarro Digital Catalogue Raisonné\”. Expertise from the Wildenstein Institute, signed by Elisabeth Gorayeb and dated New York, 7 November 2017, is included. Provenance: Gift from Camille Pissarro to Hermann Meier Hjernøe (1823–1877), procurator in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas, The Danish West Indies, today The American Virgin Islands, before 1855, where Camille Pissarro leaves the islands. From here, inherited by Hjernøe\’s son Carl Christian Hjernøe (1871–1913), a Danish poet, dramatist and actor born on St. Thomas. After his father's death in 1877, Carl returns to Denmark with his family. From here, the painting is inherited by Carl\’s daughter Ragna Bjørn, née Hjernøe (1898–1985), the current owner's grandmother. The painting has, therefore, never been sold before. Hermann Meier Hjernøe was born in Assens, and after his confirmation in 1837 he moves to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. For medical reasons and after consulting with his doctor, he travels to the Danish West Indies in 1851. Since the stay proves to be very beneficial to his health, he decides to settle permanently on St. Thomas. From 1855 to 1861 he is in Copenhagen to obtain an education as a lawyer. In 1861 he returns to St. Thomas as a deputy procurator, and later in 1863 he becomes procurator. He dies in 1877 and is buried at the Danish cemetery in Charlotte Amalie. Camille Pissarro (b. Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas 1830, d. Paris 1903)

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) Etude d'une paysanne cueillant des haricots signed with initials 'C.P.' and stamped with initials 'C.P.' (Lugt 613e; lower left) charcoal on gray paper 10 ¾ x 8 ¾ in. (27.2 x 22.2 cm.) Drawn circa 1890-1891 Provenance The Reid Gallery, Ltd., London. Acquired from the above by the late owner, August 1961.