Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

A quintessentially Impressionist scene, Canards sur l'étang de Montfoucault dates from a period of intensive experimentation of both rural imagery and artistic style in Camille Pissarro’s early career. This picturesque view depicts the pond that lay at the entrance of Montfoucault, an isolated, rural hamlet in northern France, situated on the edge of Normandy and Brittany. Invited by his close friend and fellow artist, Ludovic Piette, to stay at his home there, Pissarro and his family made frequent visits to Montfoucault, an area the artist described as, ‘the true countryside’. Thanks to Piette’s enduring friendship and quiet generosity, between 1864 and 1876 the Pissarros stayed six times, often at difficult points in their lives, including during the Franco-Prussian war and following the disheartening reception of the First Impressionist exhibition of 1874, finding in the isolated, picturesque village a welcome escape and respite.

It was his three successive visits to Montfoucault in the autumn and winter months of 1874, 1875 and 1876 that saw Pissarro reassess his approach to painting, considering new styles and themes. Piette's small farm with its own enclosed fields and the nearby pond gave a structure to the rural imagery Pissarro began to paint, which increasingly included peasant figures. In a letter to the French writer and collector Théodore Duret in December 1874, Pissarro reported on his pictorial research in Montfoucault: ‘I have started working on figures and animals. I have several projects of genre painting. I am timidly experimenting with this branch of art, so much illustrated by first-rank artists: this is rather bold’ (Pissarro, quoted in J. Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, New York, 1993, p.146). At this time the artist also began to apply paint more generously, creating rich surfaces filled with myriad brushstrokes of often unmixed and increasingly bright colour. In the present work, Pissarro has used dense, broad strokes of paint to capture the verdant foliage, as well as the multi-hued play of light and reflections on the water of the pond, all bathed under a warm, golden, early autumnal light.

Canards sur l'étang de Montfoucault was originally owned by Léon Orosdi, a passionate collector of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pictures with a notable collection of Sisleys. In his home on the rue Cimarosa in Paris, Orosdi exhibited his extensive collection, which also included works by Monet, Courbet and Pissarro, among others.