Barges at Pontoise

The Painting: This 1876 canvas is Pissarro’s only close-up of the busy port of the town of Pontoise, as witnessed by the dense formal planting of trees on the riverbank, houses close together in the distance, and a stone quai in the lower right corner. The greens, especially, are broadly applied and darker than usual but do not dominate the composition, as Pissarro's attention is focused on the boats in the foreground. The combination of a vibrant orange-red with white and black is unusual in an Impressionist painting. The artist applied pure color without regard to the legibility of details. Barges, or péniches, usually had masts; when traveling upstream, they were occasionally sailed but much more often towed, until the introduction earlier in the nineteenth century of the steam engine. The tall mast and the large black funnel must belong to the loaded freight vessel in the foreground. Next to it, low in the water, is the stern of a smaller craft, a canal boat with a man standing near the helm; a pipe on his boat emits puffy little steam clouds. Beyond are a barge with white trim (a bargeman is at the bow), a second with green trim, and perhaps others. The small, bold picture can be read from afar.

River Views on the Oise: Early in his career, Pissarro had painted the Seine and Marne Rivers. Most of his landscapes on the Oise date to 1873 or 1876. L’Hermitage, his home for many years, is close to the river. In 1873, when he settled there for the second time, the artist set up his easel opposite the buildings and smokestacks of a factory at Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône. A facing view of the factory (Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, 37.03), together with another painting and a watercolor showing the factory with the river in flood, demonstrate his interest in a quasi-industrial subject. A third canvas, seen on the diagonal and from a distance, focuses not on the buildings, but on wildflowers on the bank, reflections on the glassy water, and an expanse of sky (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 1955.554). Technical notes on the Clark painting record the absence of underdrawing and indicate that it was painted wet-into-wet, probably in a single sitting.[1] This could be true of many of the paintings of the Oise, for which Pissarro usually deployed an Impressionist palette and a rapid technique. Most are in the range of fourteen to fifteen by eighteen to twenty-one inches, making them easy to carry. When Pissarro returned to the Oise in 1876 to prepare a second group of small pictures, he focused on the river traffic and the bucolic landscape, with any structures further away or shielded from sight. A typical, loosely brushed example shows barges and a tugboat rafted together on the water opposite a wide meadow in sunlight (Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, 65.28.1). The Met’s painting is an outlier owing to its strong color and broad, unhesitating technique.

Katharine Baetjer 2022

[1] Sarah Lees, ed., Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, New Haven, 2012, p. 589.

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): C. Pissarro. 1876

The artist, Paris (1876–d. 1903); his widow, Mme Camille (Julie Vellay) Pissarro, Paris (1904–21; by deed of gift to Ludovic Rodo Pissarro); their son, Ludovic Rodo Pissarro, Paris (from 1921); [Theodore Schempp, New York, until 1950; consigned in April to Knoedler]; [Knoedler, New York, 1950; sold in June to Fosburgh]; Mr. and Mrs. James W. Fosburgh, New York (1950–72; cat., 1955, p. 70); Mary Cushing Fosburgh, New York (1972–d. 1978)

Paris. Galerie de l'Elysée. "C. Pissarro: Tableaux, pastels, dessins," April 24–May 8, 1936, no. 7 [see Snollaerts 2005].

New York. Richard L. Feigen & Co. "Bedford Collects," May 9–June 10, 1972, no. 20.

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. "Landscape Painting in the East and West," April 19–June 1, 1986, no. 11.

Kobe City Museum. "Landscape Painting in the East and West," June 7–July 13, 1986, no. 11.

Naples. Museo di Capodimonte. "Capolavori Impressionisti dei Musei Americani," December 3, 1986–February 1, 1987, no. 36.

Milan. Pinacoteca di Brera. "Capolavori Impressionisti dei Musei Americani," March 4–May 10, 1987, no. 36.

Fort Lauderdale. Museum of Art. "Corot to Cézanne: 19th Century French Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," December 22, 1992–April 11, 1993, no catalogue.

Wuppertal. Von der Heydt-Museum. "Pissarro—Der Vater des Impressionismus," October 14, 2014–February 22, 2015, unnumbered cat. (ill. p. 253).

Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro, son art—son œuvre. reprint ed. 1989. Paris, 1939, vol. 1, p. 131, no. 358; vol. 2, pl. 71, no. 358.

Everett Parker Lesley, ed. Catalogue of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Fosburgh. 1955, p. 70.

Anne Schirrmeister. Camille Pissarro. New York, 1982, pp. 10–11, colorpl. 17.

Charles S. Moffett. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1985, pp. 88–89, ill. (color, overall and detail).

Richard R. Brettell with Joachim Pissarro. Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in a Landscape. New Haven, 1990, pp. 173, 216 n. 50, fig. 59 (color).

Roger Hurlburt. "Free Spirits." Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale) (December 20, 1992), p. 4D.

Helen Kohen. "Lasting Impressions." Miami Herald (December 20, 1992), p. 6I.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 439, ill.

Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts in Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts. Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings. Milan, 2005, vol. 1, pp. 380, 400, 410, 416; vol. 2, pp. 100, 331, no. 460, ill. (color); vol. 3, pp. 953, 957.