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Lot Essay
Camille Pissarro, like many of his fellow Impressionist peintre-graveurs, experimented with print media as well as painting in depicting the natural world. In the present work, one of his best known prints, Pissarro employed a range of techniques to convey a complex interplay of light and texture. He used spit-bite aquatint, a method where acid is applied directly to the plate, to create the dappled quality of the leaves. For the texture of the tree bark, the artist used lift-ground applied with a brush. Pissarro’s technical skill in intaglio developed as a result of his proximity to the work of Edgar Degas. During the same period that the present work was executed, the two artists frequently created their prints together, and even shared a printing studio in 1879.
Based on an painting with the same title, now in the collection of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Wooded Landscape at L’Hermitage, Pontoise was intended to be published in a journal devoted to original prints, La jour et la Nuit, organized by Edgar Degas. The other works proposed for the journal were Degas's Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (R. & S. 51) and Mary Cassatt's In the Opera Box (B. 22). The project was ultimately abandoned in 1880, and the journal was never published. Four states of this image were, however, exhibited at the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880.
Based on an painting with the same title, now in the collection of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Wooded Landscape at L’Hermitage, Pontoise was intended to be published in a journal devoted to original prints, La jour et la Nuit, organized by Edgar Degas. The other works proposed for the journal were Degas's Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (R. & S. 51) and Mary Cassatt's In the Opera Box (B. 22). The project was ultimately abandoned in 1880, and the journal was never published. Four states of this image were, however, exhibited at the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880.