Sixty Works by Modern Masters - Flipbook - Page 15
Camille Pissarro
"Cover the canvas at the first go, then work
at it until you see nothing more to add."
Camille Pissarro
French, 1830 - 1903
La Servante Assise dans le Jardin d’Eragny, 1884
Oil on canvas
23½ x 29 inches / 60 x 73.5 cm
Signed, dedicated and dated lower right: à l’ami Nunes C. Pissarro. 84
Women featured among Pissarro’s
most personal subjects. The focus
of this vividly-coloured outdoor
scene is a servant girl, who keeps
a watchful eye on two playing
children.
Pissarro and his family moved northwest of Paris to Eragny the same
year that this work was painted, and
the figures seen in the background
are those of his son Ludovic Rodo
and daughter Jeanne-Marguerite, or
‘Cocotte’. The arrangement of the
children in the composition draws
the eye backwards and serves to
create a sense of pictorial depth,
while the artist’s characteristic
impasto reminds us of the surface of
the canvas and of his spontaneous
technique.
14
Provenance
Alfred Nunes, Paris, (a gift from the artist)
René Gimpel, Paris
Vicomte du Lude, Paris
Anon. sale, Christie’s London, 25 June 1990, lot 19
Private collection, London
Literature
Ludovic Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro. Son ArtSon Oeuvre, vol. 1, Paris, 1939, no. 655, vol. II, no. 655, illustrated pl. 135
Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Critical
Catalogue of Paintings, Paris, Wildenstein Institute, 2005, no. 770, p. 510