This is one of many painted fans that Pissarro began to produce with the encouragement of Degas, who envisioned a room devoted to fans at the 1879 Impressionist exhibition. While Degas favored designs showing urban entertainment, Pissarro opted for rural subjects. Here, peasant women in bright kerchiefs harvest cabbages and tend the fields. The work was among the first by the artist to be acquired by an American. Louisine Elder (later Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer) bought it in the late 1870s, along with a Degas and a Monet, launching her pioneering collection of Impressionist pictures.
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Title:Fan Mount: The Cabbage Gatherers
Artist:Camille Pissarro (French, Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas 1830–1903 Paris)
Date:ca. 1878–79
Medium:Gouache on silk
Dimensions:6 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (16.5 x 52.1 cm)
Classification:Drawings
Credit Line:Purchase, Leonora Brenauer Bequest, in memory of her father, Joseph B. Brenauer, 1994
Accession Number:1994.105
Inscription: Signed (lower left): C. Pissarro
?Mary Cassatt, Paris (about 1879; probably purchased from the artist for Elder); Louisine Elder, later Mrs. H. O. (Louisine W.) Havemeyer, Paris and New York (about 1879–d. 1929; her sale, American Art Association, New York, April 10, 1930, no. 32, as "Fan Painting: The Cabbage Gatherers," for $650 to Laporte); Mr. and Mrs. William F. Laporte, Passaic, N.J. (1930–1944; their sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, March 30, no. 57, as "La récolte des choux," for $1,300 to Marshall); Mrs. George Marshall [Elisabeth], London (1944–d. 1993, sale Sotheby's, London, June 30, 1992, no. 6, as "La récolte des choux," bought in; her estate, sold to The Met)
Paris. 28, avenue de l'Opéra. "4me exposition de peinture [4th Impressionist exhibition]," April 10–May 11, 1879, no. 200 (as "Cueillette de petits pois," lent by Mlle C . . ., probably this picture) [see Gerstein 1978 and Adler 1992].
New York. American Art Association. "Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris," April 10–28, 1886, no. 307 (as "Peasant Girls at Normandy," lent by H. O. Havemeyer, Esq.).
New York. National Academy of Design. "Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris," May 25–June 30, 1886, no. 307.
Paris. Galeries Durand-Ruel. "L'œuvre de Camille Pissarro," April 7–30, 1904, no. 145 (as "La Récolte, éventail," lent by Miss Cassatt, possibly this picture) [see Pissarro and Venturi 1939].
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection," March 27–June 20, 1993, no. A427 (lent by a private collection).
Paris. Musée d'Orsay. "La collection Havemeyer: Quand l'Amérique découvrait l'impressionnisme...," October 20, 1997–January 18, 1998, no. 4.
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT.
Camille Pissarro. Letter to Murer. [1878] [reprinted in Janine Bailly-Herzberg, "Correspondance de Camille Pissarro," vol. 1, 1865–1885, Paris, pp. 119–20], mentions that he has sold a small painting for fifty francs to an American young lady, probably this one to Louisine Elder.
Robert Simpson Cassatt. Letter to Alexander Cassatt. April 18, 1881 [see Weitzenhoffer 1986], the author (Mary Cassatt's father) writes to her brother Alexander, noting that the Elders have a Pissarro "& Mame thinks there are no others in America. If exhibited at any of your Fine Art Shows [it] will be sure to attract attention".
H. O. Havemeyer Collection: Catalogue of Paintings, Prints, Sculpture and Objects of Art. n.p., 1931, p. 505, calls it "Landscape—Cabbage Gatherers".
Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro, son art—son œuvre. reprint ed. 1989. Paris, 1939, vol. 1, p. 304, no. 1624; vol. 2, pl. 308, no. 1624, call it "La récolte des choux" and date it about 1883.
Marc Saul Gerstein. "Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Fans." PhD diss., Harvard University, 1978, pp. 129–30, 141, 237, 240, no. 12, ill., notes that two crops are being harvested in the foreground, on the left cabbages and on the right peas, and remarks that the plants on the right are similar to those in two paintings of 1880 titled "Cueillete de pois" (P&V 518–19), continues that, "the titles for these paintings are justified by a drawing for P&V 518 inscribed by Pissarro "récolte des petits pois" (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford); concludes that if the woman on the right is picking peas, it is probable that this work was in the "Fourth Impressionist Exhibition," 1879 as "Cueillette de petit pois," belonging to Mlle C., and also in the 1904 "Camille Pissarro" exhibition at Durand-Ruel, Paris, listed under 1883 as "La récolte," lent by Miss Cassatt.
Frances Weitzenhoffer. "The Creation of the Havemeyer Collection, 1875–1900." PhD diss., City University of New York, 1982, pp. 15, 29 n. 12, pp. 45, 64, 198 n. 45, p. 281 n. 31, mentions that Louisine Elder purchased a fan painting, "Peasant Girls at Normandy," probably this work, from Mary Cassatt in 1874.
Frances Weitzenhoffer. The Havemeyers: Impressionism Comes to America. New York, 1986, pp. 22, 27, 34, 41, 117–18, calls it "Peasant Girls at Normandy" and notes that Louisine Elder "apparently purchased" it from Cassatt before her marriage; quotes Cassatt 1881; regarding its exhibition in New York 1886, notes that it was characteristic of Louisine (then newly) Havemeyer to lend her pictures under the name "H. O. Havemeyer".
Ronald Pickvance inThe New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886. Ed. Charles S. Moffett. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. San Francisco, 1986, p. 270, no. 200, probably this picture.
Kathleen Adler. "'Objets de luxe' or Propaganda? Camille Pissarro's Fans." Apollo 136 (November 1992), pp. 303, 305 n. 22, identifies it as the fan by Pissarro from Cassatt's collection that she lent to Paris 1879 under the title "Cueillette de petits pois" (Gathering Peas).
Louisine W. Havemeyer. Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector. Ed. Susan Alyson Stein. 3rd ed. [1st ed. 1930, repr. 1961]. New York, 1993, pp. 206, 331 n. 291, p. 332 n. 295.
Susan Alyson Stein inSplendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1993, pp. 5–6, 8, 203, 206, colorpl. 4.
Gretchen Wold inSplendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1993, pp. 368–69, no. A427, ill., dates it about 1878–79; suggest that this work was bought by Louisine Elder from Mary Cassatt, probably in 1879.
Susan Alyson Stein in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1993–1994." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 52 (Fall 1994), p. 50, ill. in color (out of the frame), dates it about 1878–79; comments that it is contemporary with the fan paintings Pissarro showed at the fourth Impressionist exhibition and with our two other fan paintings, by Degas (MMA 29.100.554 and 29.100.555), all three of which were in the Havemeyer collection; remarks that Mary Cassatt probably bought this work directly from the artist in 1879 and mentions that it "has the distinction of being among the first of his works to enter an American collection".
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 439, ill.
Alexia de Buffévent in Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts. Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings. Milan, 2005, vol. 1, p. 162.
Laura D. Corey and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen. "Visions of Collecting." Making The Met, 1870–2020. Ed. Andrea Bayer with Laura D. Corey. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2020, pp. 131, 264 n. 9.
Catherine Méneux in "Relative Independence: The Determining Role of Collectors at the Fourth 'Impressionist' Exhibition in 1879." Collecting Impressionism: A Reappraisal of the Role of Collectors in the History of the Movement. Ed. Ségolène Le Men and Félicie Faizand de Maupeou. Milan, 2022, pp. 143, 150 n. 31, fig. 5 (color), as "Pea Harvest, Fan (Cueillette de petits pois, éventail)"; identifies it as the fan Cassatt lent to the 1879 exhibition.
Pissarro created approximately 37 fans in his lifetime, beginning about 1879 and continuing throughout the rest of his life, although significantly fewer were produced from 1890 on. The first of these were exhibited at the fourth Impressionist exhibition, April–May 1879 in Paris.
Camille Pissarro (French, Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas 1830–1903 Paris)
1886
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