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拍品专文
Painted in 1895, Camille Pissarro’s Brouillard à Éragny is a panoramic vision of the French countryside at daybreak. The light is soft, dappled, and fragments of pink and lavender are visible through the early morning mist which has gathered amongst the greenery. Dew has settled on the grass, and in the warming sunlight, the leaves on the trees turn bright. Time here seems perfectly still as Éragny – a small village north of Paris and where Pissarro and his family were living – awaits the day’s beginning and all the possibility that it will bring.
Searching for a permanent base, Pissarro and his family moved to Éragny in 1884. The land around his home would provide a wealth of inspiration for the artist through the ensuing decades. ‘Unlike Pontoise,’ wrote Joachim Pissarro, ‘whose tensions were those of a suburban town, semirural and semiurban, in Éragny, no signs of industry could be observed for miles. Varied expanses of pasture and cultivated land complete the visual field. However, Éragny’s earthly space is not banal. For twenty years Pissarro concentrated on this very confined area, on the visual material offered by the stretch of meadows lying in front of him, informed by poplars, gates, the river, and produced over two hundred paintings of these motifs. His representations of these fields and gardens constitute the most spectacularly intense pictorial effort to “cover” a particular given space in his career’ (in Camille Pissarro, New York, 1993, p. 225).
After a brief flirtation with Divisionism during the 1880s, and the techniques championed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Pissarro turned back to Impressionism in 1890, the movement he helped to found more than a decade earlier. Insofar as it was possible, Pissarro again began painting en plein air, setting his easel up outside and attending to the ever-changing, variable qualities of light and weather. The feathery brushwork, flecked lighting, and sense of evanescence in Brouillard à Éragny speak to this triumphant return. Indeed, embracing flux was a key tenet for Pissarro, who believed that an Impressionist painter was someone ‘who never [made] the same painting twice’ (quoted in R. Shikes & P. Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 311). Underscoring this point, he gave his paintings precise, evocative titles proclaiming the seasonal and climatic conditions that made each scene unique, a practice he shared with Claude Monet, who likewise titled his paintings after the ephemeral effects he documented.
These late Impressionist canvases were much admired by the artist’s contemporaries. Critics such as Gustave Geffroy and Georges Lecomte particularly appreciated the landscapes, with Geffory observing that they were ‘visions of life in the countryside’ (quoted in R. Brettel, ‘Camille Pissarro: A revision’, in Pissarro, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1980, p. 35). Scholars, too, have remarked on the importance of this body of work: the last period, note Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel, can be understood as ‘a summation’, as the ‘refinement of compositional procedures and an advance in technique seem to have allowed Pissarro to paint with greater freedom and confidence’ (ibid., p. 134). This is evident in the lavish surface of Brouillard à Éragny, and indeed, during these years, Pissarro often applied his pigments in thick, luscious strokes, rendering a ‘luminosity of texture’ and ‘intensity’ that enriched each canvas with an ‘almost visionary quality’ (ibid.). John Rewald, likewise, commented on the vitality of these late canvases, writing that ‘everything is fresh, painted with such enthusiasm, optimism, and youthfulness that it inspires veneration’ (Camille Pissarro: 1830-1903, New York, 1954, n.p.).
Captivated by the views Éragny presented, which Pissarro referred to as ‘a marvel,’ he returned to the landscapes surrounding his home again and again, in sunshine and rain, darkness and light (quoted in J. Pissarro and C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings, vol. I, Paris, 2005, p. 89). Far from simply documenting what he saw, Pissarro’s paintings appear to arrest time, and by dedicating himself so thoroughly to this terrain, he was able to explore the often striking transformations that each season brings, from spring’s first buds to the brooding mystery that winter wrought. Brouillard à Éragny captures the morning fog in all its mysterious beauty. The painting exudes an air of rural tranquillity, the quiet that mist and morning light bring to an emerging world.
Searching for a permanent base, Pissarro and his family moved to Éragny in 1884. The land around his home would provide a wealth of inspiration for the artist through the ensuing decades. ‘Unlike Pontoise,’ wrote Joachim Pissarro, ‘whose tensions were those of a suburban town, semirural and semiurban, in Éragny, no signs of industry could be observed for miles. Varied expanses of pasture and cultivated land complete the visual field. However, Éragny’s earthly space is not banal. For twenty years Pissarro concentrated on this very confined area, on the visual material offered by the stretch of meadows lying in front of him, informed by poplars, gates, the river, and produced over two hundred paintings of these motifs. His representations of these fields and gardens constitute the most spectacularly intense pictorial effort to “cover” a particular given space in his career’ (in Camille Pissarro, New York, 1993, p. 225).
After a brief flirtation with Divisionism during the 1880s, and the techniques championed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Pissarro turned back to Impressionism in 1890, the movement he helped to found more than a decade earlier. Insofar as it was possible, Pissarro again began painting en plein air, setting his easel up outside and attending to the ever-changing, variable qualities of light and weather. The feathery brushwork, flecked lighting, and sense of evanescence in Brouillard à Éragny speak to this triumphant return. Indeed, embracing flux was a key tenet for Pissarro, who believed that an Impressionist painter was someone ‘who never [made] the same painting twice’ (quoted in R. Shikes & P. Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 311). Underscoring this point, he gave his paintings precise, evocative titles proclaiming the seasonal and climatic conditions that made each scene unique, a practice he shared with Claude Monet, who likewise titled his paintings after the ephemeral effects he documented.
These late Impressionist canvases were much admired by the artist’s contemporaries. Critics such as Gustave Geffroy and Georges Lecomte particularly appreciated the landscapes, with Geffory observing that they were ‘visions of life in the countryside’ (quoted in R. Brettel, ‘Camille Pissarro: A revision’, in Pissarro, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1980, p. 35). Scholars, too, have remarked on the importance of this body of work: the last period, note Christopher Lloyd and Anne Distel, can be understood as ‘a summation’, as the ‘refinement of compositional procedures and an advance in technique seem to have allowed Pissarro to paint with greater freedom and confidence’ (ibid., p. 134). This is evident in the lavish surface of Brouillard à Éragny, and indeed, during these years, Pissarro often applied his pigments in thick, luscious strokes, rendering a ‘luminosity of texture’ and ‘intensity’ that enriched each canvas with an ‘almost visionary quality’ (ibid.). John Rewald, likewise, commented on the vitality of these late canvases, writing that ‘everything is fresh, painted with such enthusiasm, optimism, and youthfulness that it inspires veneration’ (Camille Pissarro: 1830-1903, New York, 1954, n.p.).
Captivated by the views Éragny presented, which Pissarro referred to as ‘a marvel,’ he returned to the landscapes surrounding his home again and again, in sunshine and rain, darkness and light (quoted in J. Pissarro and C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings, vol. I, Paris, 2005, p. 89). Far from simply documenting what he saw, Pissarro’s paintings appear to arrest time, and by dedicating himself so thoroughly to this terrain, he was able to explore the often striking transformations that each season brings, from spring’s first buds to the brooding mystery that winter wrought. Brouillard à Éragny captures the morning fog in all its mysterious beauty. The painting exudes an air of rural tranquillity, the quiet that mist and morning light bring to an emerging world.