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Lot 116 Property from the Collection of the Composer Robert Allen
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
La vie aux champs (meule et semeur)
Closed2 May 2012
Price Realised
USD 182,500
More Information
Specialist note
The Wildenstein Institute will include this work in their forthcoming catalogue critique of Pissarro's pastels and gouaches.
Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Edgar Degas was the prime mover behind plans for the fourth Impressionist exhibition to be held in April-May 1879 at 28, Avenue de L'Opera, in Paris. As part of the exhibition he envisioned a room devoted entirely to fans painted by himself, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Jean-Louis Forain, and Felix and Marie Braquemond. In the end the room did not materialize, and only Pissarro and Forain exhibited fans alongside Degas. Pissarro contributed a dozen (including the present work), Forain four and Degas five.
These artists were attracted to the japonisme of fan painting and to the challenge it posed in composing their subjects. The curved, elongated format creates the effect of distant receding space, and lends itself to a panoramic or 'widescreen' view. Because the foreground appears at the edges of the composition rather than in the center, the artist must anchor his composition by emphasizing the sides. Pissarro achieves this in the present work by placing a figure on the left side. Pissarro allows the curvature of the fan to exert this pull on his horizon lines; he ingeniously constructs his composition by crossing two diagonals just beyond the center of the fan, one created by the rise just beyond the haystack and the other defined by the receding road, which is continued by the more distant horizon line on the right side.
Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Edgar Degas was the prime mover behind plans for the fourth Impressionist exhibition to be held in April-May 1879 at 28, Avenue de L'Opera, in Paris. As part of the exhibition he envisioned a room devoted entirely to fans painted by himself, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Jean-Louis Forain, and Felix and Marie Braquemond. In the end the room did not materialize, and only Pissarro and Forain exhibited fans alongside Degas. Pissarro contributed a dozen (including the present work), Forain four and Degas five.
These artists were attracted to the japonisme of fan painting and to the challenge it posed in composing their subjects. The curved, elongated format creates the effect of distant receding space, and lends itself to a panoramic or 'widescreen' view. Because the foreground appears at the edges of the composition rather than in the center, the artist must anchor his composition by emphasizing the sides. Pissarro achieves this in the present work by placing a figure on the left side. Pissarro allows the curvature of the fan to exert this pull on his horizon lines; he ingeniously constructs his composition by crossing two diagonals just beyond the center of the fan, one created by the rise just beyond the haystack and the other defined by the receding road, which is continued by the more distant horizon line on the right side.