Provenance

Arthur Goldsmith

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We look slightly down onto a bare, gnarled tree near a gray, dirt path, which leads back to a hamlet in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so many details are indistinct. To our left, the gray tree trunk sways to the left as the branches of its skeletal canopy nearly span the width of the painting. The path extends from the lower right corner of the painting into the distance, around a lattice-like fence, which also runs across the width of the canvas. To our right and facing away from us, a person wearing brown pants, a sky-blue shirt, and a gray cap leans his forearms on the chest-high fence as he presumably talks with the woman standing on the other side. She wears a long navy-blue dress with a sea-blue apron and a tan hat. The land enclosed within the fence is painted with bands of peanut brown and sage green. Another woman wearing a slate-blue skirt, a sky-blue shirt, and a white cap walks away from us down the path using a cane or walking stick. To her right is a thicket of loosely painted moss-green and rust-brown foliage. Across a gully in the distance, a white picket fence separates us from the small village. The buildings have white or beige walls and pitched terracotta-red, tan, or denim-blue roofs. Beyond these structures, flax-brown trees are silhouetted against a light blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark brown in the lower left corner: “C. Pissarro. 1872.”
Camille Pissarro, The Fence, 1872, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.31

The Fence

Camille Pissarro · 1872 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.31