Thursday, October 5, 2017

Peasant Prints by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro
Peasants in a field
1891
drypoint, aquatint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Haymakers at Éragny
1896
lithograph on cream chine collé
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Peasants carrying firewood
1896
lithograph on blue chine collé
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Peasants carrying hay
ca. 1900
drypoint
British Museum

"Pissarro's earliest figure drawings can easily be compared with those of Cézanne, Degas, and Seurat, against which they fall a bit short.  Pissarro did not, like his three more talented contemporaries, put a personal stamp on these drawings; rather, they have an air of duty about them.  . . .  Pissarro was too concerned with being successful at his task to be original or even eloquent.  Yet he did have stamina and ability, and when he approached the figure again in the 1870s, he was ready to develop his work to a considerably higher technical and aesthetic level."

"Surely the example in this was Degas, whose figural works on paper, including charcoal and pastel drawings, Pissarro had seen numerous times, even in the Impressionist exhibitions.  These powerful works provided a level of traditional skill and experimentation that Pissarro rose to as he applied Degas's lessons of eccentric composition, and his interest in clothed or partially clothed figures, to rural models.  Fascinatingly, many, perhaps even the majority, of Pissarro's figure drawings represent standing subjects, many of whom perform some kind of activity associated with work.  This too has its origins not in the atelier, with its posed figures, but in Degas's studies of laundresses, dancers, and horseback riders as they exercised or worked.  These "modern" bodies were as important to Pissarro as they were to Degas.  As Pissarro worked increasingly with rural models in Pontoise and Montfoucault (they were less expensive to hire, compared to urban models), he began to represent them with increasing confidence and élan."

 Richard R. Brettell in Pissarro's People, an exhibition catalog issued by Prestel in 2011

Camille Pissarro
Peasant carrying buckets
1889
drypoint, aquatint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Goose girl
1888
drypoint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Haymaker at Éragny
1897
etching, aquatint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Rain effect
1879
drypoint, aquatint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Twilight (with haystacks)
1879
drypoint, aquatint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Brush-cutters
1896
lithograph on cream chine collé
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Sunday rest in the wood
1891
drypoint, aquatint
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Church and farm at Éragny
1890
color etching
British Museum

Camille Pissarro
Self-portrait
ca. 1890
drypoint, aquatint
British Museum

Bernard Klene
Portrait of Camille Pissarro 
ca. 1900
lithograph
British Museum