Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro
(French, 1830-1903)

Peasant Woman, late 1880s, and Quayside Scene, 1903 (two works)
Peasant Woman, ink and graphite on paper; Quayside Scene, graphite on paper each stamped C.P. (lower right)
Larger: 8 ½ x 6 ¾ inches; smaller: 4 ¼ x 6 ¾ inches.
Property from the Collection of Mark and Patricia McGrath, Chicago, Illinois Fine Art each stamped C.P. (lower right)

Dr. Joachim Pissarro will include these works in his forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings by Camille Pissarro.

Peasant Woman
Provenance:
Collection of Michael Zagayski
Sold: Sotheby's, New York, June 29, 1995, Lot 268

Quayside Scene
Lugt 613e (recto, lower right)

Lot note (Peasant Woman):
From relatively early on in his career, Camille Pissarro was interested in depicting scenes of outdoor
markets and public gatherings with crowds. Pissarro became particularly interested in market
scenes around 1880, and continued to explore the market theme through the 1880s and 1890s.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Pissarro’s various market scenes is that they are his first
systematic study of the crowd. The great number of figures that are chatting, bargaining, and
looking at one another suggest that Pissarro’s markets are meeting places of social and economic
equals. Many of the figure studies drawn in the 1880s were made while the artist was preparing
market compositions that required a large number of figures.

Peasant Woman is likely a figure study for a market composition and probably dates from the late 1880s. Pissarro determines to capture the essential outline of the figure and appears to have redrawn the contours several times. Peasant Woman shares similarities with another study of figures at a market scene, Compositional study of a market scene, illustrated as no. 214 in A Catalogue of the Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford by Richard Brettell & Christopher Lloyd. Although the drawing in the Ashmolean is a more finished composition, both drawings share similar crosshatching and pen strokes of varying thickness developed in the caricature drawings of the mid 1880s.

Perhaps, due to Pissarro’s purchase of Champfleury’s Histoire de la Caricature in 1883, he from then on regularly resorted to caricature and various forms of comic notations within his market scenes. Pissarro believed in emphasizing the caricatural aspect of such studies through which the spirit of a figure could often be suggested with only a few lines. The essence of such drawings is the speed of execution and therefore, one of Pissarro’s favored devices consisted of placing emphasis on one particular part of his
character’s garments, instruments, or facial features, which became either prevailing or at least
conferred a certain overall connotation on the whole character.

Another market study with similar pen work as the present drawing is titled Study of a Market, in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. Although Peasant Woman does not appear to relate directly to any known paintings by Pissarro, such studies were useful in paintings with staffage figures. In the painting every figure and every vehicle is treated as individual and specific, even the people jammed in the crowd.

- Joachim Pissarro, Ph. D.

Lot note (Quayside Scene):
Throughout his career, Camille Pissarro remained interested in depicting scenes of outdoor markets and public gatherings where the crowd was entertained by its own presence. Quayside Scene appears to depict the quayside of Le Havre. Pissarro spent the summer of 1903 in Le Havre, where he was fascinated by the feverish activity on the quayside and in the harbor. In a letter of July 17, 1903, he wrote of Le Havre: ‘Here I am settled down, working at the Hotel Continental on the jetty. Superb and very lively motifs.’ During his stay he resided in the Hôtel Continental, where he could observe all the activity from the window of his room. In Le Havre, Pissarro found inspiration for no fewer than twenty-four paintings. The group of paintings depicting the harbor at Le Havre was the last series of cityscapes undertaken by Pissarro.

Le Havre occupies a particularly important place within Pissarro’s biography, and his career. It was the very first city in France he saw, as a young boy having crossed the Atlantic from his native Virgin Islands to study in Paris and it was one of the last cities where he ever worked. Additionally, the Le Havre Museum was the first museum in France to acquire a painting by Pissarro — indeed, the only museum that acquired a painting by the artist during his lifetime. Le Havre was also known to Pissarro as this was where one of his closest friends, Claude Monet grew up, and trained as a young artist. After having completed his first series of cityscapes in Rouen in 1883, then again in 1896 and 1898, and having completed a second series of cityscapes in Dieppe, in 1901 and 1902, he culminated his exploration of the main harbors in Normandy with this striking series of works depicting the harbor of Le Havre.

Quayside Scene is most closely related to another study of a quayside scene, Study of figures on the quayside, Le Havre, illustrated as no. 278A from Sketchbook XXVII in A Catalogue of the Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford by Richard Brettell & Christopher Lloyd. The drawing from Sketchbook XXVII, no. 278A in Brettell & Lloyd, shares almost identical dimensions with Quayside Scene, the dimensions as well as the subject matter indicates that the drawing in question most likely also came from Sketchbook XXVII. In both drawings, motifs are noticeable that are frequently depicted in this sketchbook, such as cranes, boats and jetties. The style of the figures, with loose episodic outlines joined by bands of hatching in Study of figures on the quayside, Le Havre, is similar to the present drawing and therefore, the drawings were likely executed around the same time, 1903. In the background of Quayside Scene, a structure that appears to be two ship masts suggests a harbor gathering or fish-market. Brettell & Lloyd writes, ‘it is perhaps fitting that Pissarro, who began his career as an artist by drawing on the dock at Charlotte Amalie, the capital of the island of St. Thomas, should end his working life with these drawings of the harbor and shipping movements observed at Le Havre.’ Quayside Scene does not appear to relate directly to any known oil paintings by Pissarro.

- Joachim Pissarro, Ph. D.