The Gardener - Old Peasant with Cabbage

1883-1895

Camille Pissarro

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

An older man with ruddy, peachy skin stands in the lower right of this vertical painting holding a large, green, leafy cabbage. He is shown from the hips up and faces our left with his body angled slightly toward us. His head tilts down with his mouth open to gaze at the vibrant green cabbage held tightly in both hands. Fringes of gray hair sprout from under his peanut-brown, short-brimmed cap, and gray stubble frames his open mouth. His cheeks are hollow but he has a fleshy double chin. The collar of his white shirt is visible at the neckline of his long-sleeved, tan jacket. The jacket is covered by a seafoam-green apron touched with short strokes of navy-blue, teal, peach, and pine-green paint. He stands against several rows of round cabbages and other indistinct olive-green objects that might be more vegetables stacked up beyond him. The very top of the composition is filled with a band of tightly speckled mauve, peach, and white, with a few flecks of blue and green. The artist signed and dated the lower right with red paint, “C. Pissarro 1883-95.”

Media Options

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The skill with which this gardener tends to his cabbage was likely developed over a lifetime of hard work. Pissarro often painted rural laborers, using a wide spectrum of colors to create brilliant, vivid portraits. Alongside Claude Monet, Pissarro was one of the leading landscape painters of the impressionist movement. But unlike Monet, he was also devoted to painting people.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 81.5 x 65 cm (32 1/16 x 25 9/16 in.)
    framed: 106.7 x 90.5 x 9.5 cm (42 x 35 5/8 x 3 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1994.59.6

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

By inheritance from the artist [1830-1903] to his wife, Mme. Camille [Julie] Pissarro; [1] by gift 1921 to the artist's daughter Jeanne Pissarro-Bonin [Mme Alexandre Bonin, 1881-1948]; sold 23 May 1923 to (Durand-Ruel, Paris);sold January 1959 to (Sam Salz, New York); sold April 1959 to Mr. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[2] gift 1994 to NGA.
[1]Included in the 1921 Paris exhibition of Collection Mme Vve Pissarro, no. 16. [2] Provenance from the artist through Sam Salz per Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Catalogue critique des peintures, 2005, II: 710.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1914

  • Rétrospective C. Pissarro, Galerie Manzi et Joyant, Paris, 1914, no. 36.

1921

  • Collection de Mme Vve Pissarro, Galerie Nunès et Fiquet, Paris, 1921, no. 16.

1928

  • Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1928, no. 42.

1930

  • Centenaire de la naissance de Camille Pissarro, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 1930, no. 62, repro., as Le triage des choux.

1937

  • Chefs d'Oeuvre de l'art français, International Exposition, Paris, 1937. no. 385

1966

  • French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 35, repro.

2011

  • Pissarro's People, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2011-2012, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 126.

Bibliography

1939

  • Pissarro, Ludovic and Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro, son art, son oeuvre. 2 vols. Paris, 1939:1:169, no. 617, as Le Triage de Choux; 2:pl. 128.

1981

  • Lloyd, Christopher. Camille Pissarro. New York, 1981: 90, 146, repro., as The Sorting of Cabbages (The Gardener - Old Peasant with Cabbage).

1993

  • Pissarro, Joachim. Camille Pissarro. New York, 1993: 182-183, no. 205., 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. 710, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: C. Pissarro / 1883-95

Wikidata ID

Q20189613

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