Landscape at Les Pâtis, Pontoise

1868

Camille Pissarro

Artist, French, born St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1830 - 1903

A small complex of white buildings with red-tile roofs are engulfed in a patchwork of lush, green farm fields over rolling hills in this nearly square painting. The sun-drenched scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes in shades of spring, clover, and pine green, with touches of caramel and sand brown. The horizon comes about three-quarters of the way up the composition, and white clouds float against the pale blue sky above. Small in scale, a few people walk along pathways between fields and a few work among the crops. The cluster of buildings is situated along the base of a hill that rises in the distance, about halfway up the painting. A man wearing a straw hat, a white shirt, and denim-blue overalls walks away from us, perhaps carrying a long-handled tool in the lower left corner of the painting. Another person, perhaps a woman wearing a dress and white cap, stands at a fence along the path, near the man. The artist signed and dated the work with dark paint in the lower right corner: “C.Pissarro.68.”

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 88

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist's daughter Jeanne Pissarro-Bonin [Mme Alexandre Bonin, 1881-1948], Paris. (Galerie Georges Petit, Paris); sold 8 October 1919 to (Mancini, Paris).[2] Emile Lernoud, Buenos Aires, c. 1924; Dr. Carlos Zubizarreta, Buenos Aires, by 1932;[1] acquired 1954 by (Wildenstein & Co., New York); acquired February 1955 by Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, New York;[3] gift (partial and promised) 1991 to NGA.
[1] The painting was lent by Zubizaretta to a 1932 exhibition in Buenos Aires.
[2] Previous owners Petit and Mancini are per Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings, 3 vols., Milan and Paris, 2005: 3:no. 125.
[3] The Rockefeller purchase date is according to Art for the Nation, Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1991: 156.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1932

  • Amigos del Arte, Buenos Aires, 1932, no. 39.

1980

  • Pissarro, Hayward Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1980-1981, no. 12B, repro.

1991

  • Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, 156-157, color repro.

Bibliography

1939

  • Pissarro, Ludovic and Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro, son art, son oeuvre. 2 vols. Paris, 1939:1:86, no. 61, as Paysage aux Patis, Pontoise; 2:pl. 11.

1992

  • Lloyd, Christopher. "'Paul Cézanne, pupil of Pissarro' An artistic friendship." Apollo CXXXXVI, no. 369 (November 1992): 284+, repro.

2005

  • Pissarro, Joachim and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of the Paintings, 3 vols., Milan, Paris and New York, 2005: II:no. 125, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: C.Pissarro.68

Wikidata ID

Q20188708

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