GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Camille Pissarro captures a cold morning and the resulting veneer of frost that coats the picturesque Parisian suburb of Louveciennes, where the artist lived at the time. This painting depicts the landscape in late fall or early winter, just as the trees lose their leaves and frost begins to form. The sun rises and casts long shadows, melting the ephemeral frost.
Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Pissarro fled to England. While abroad, he studied English landscape painting, including the works of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, and incorporated elements of their style into his own painting technique, as evident in this humble scene of the French countryside with particular attention paid to the rendering of light and atmosphere.
Excerpt from
Heather MacDonald, DMA label copy, 2015.
NOTES
Created in 1871
Pissarro was at the height of his powers in 1871, when he painted this compact and subtle study of morning light playing on a street near his home in Louveciennes. Unable to enlist in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War because of his Danish citizenship, Pissarro fled France at the end of 1870 and remained in exile in London until July 1871. When he returned to France, he found that his house had been ransacked by the German army and that many of his early paintings had been destroyed. Rather than being dissuaded by this setback, Pissarro commenced a campaign of landscapes representing Louveciennes that are among the greatest of his career. All the pictures benefit greatly from his time in England, not only because he was able to paint with fellow exiles Monet, Sisley, and Daubigny during that year, but also because he had studied the paintings, oil sketches, and watercolors by Constable and Turner in public collections in London. This injection of pictorial energy from earlier in the century was all that Pissarro needed to solidify his position as one of the most prominent landscape painters of the century. Whether large or small, his paintings summarize more than a decade of study, both from nature and from the greatest painters of nature. This small canvas was painted late in 1871 in a successful attempt to trap in paint one of nature's most elusive moods during autumn and winter. On clear, cold nights, the dew that gathers on the dead leaves and grasses freezes, and in the light of dawn, the entire landscape is cloaked in a white crystalline covering that disappears as soon as it is warmed by the sun. This effect - in French, "gelée blanche," in English, "hoarfrost," or more poetically, "morning frost" - was a particular favorite of Pissarro, who preferred it to painting snow effects. The challenges in representing it are enormous because the frost melts so quickly in the sun. For this reason, Pissarro prepared a small canvas, working on it only during clear late-fall or early-winter mornings and waiting for the morning frost, so that, with whitened mixtures of his colors, he could lay a frosting of white paint on the roughened surface of a painting that was essentially finished. All of the old labels on the painting identify its site as Poissy, a hillside town further west of Paris than Louveciennes. Pissarro is not known to have visited Poissy, and his son Ludovic-Rodo identified the site as Louveciennes, where Pissarro lived throughout the winter of 1871-1872, and where he produced all the other paintings that survive from that winter (Pissarro 1989, vol. 2, no. 127). For that reason, we conclude that the painting was made in Louveciennes, as catalogued.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 45.
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Artist/designers
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Geography
Depicted location and place of origin: Louveciennes (inhabited place/France): TGN: 7009311
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WEB RESOURCES
- Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid~View another depiction of Louveciennes by Camille Pissarro.
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris~Learn about the working relationship between Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne from 1865-1885.
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General Description
Camille Pissarro captures a cold morning and the resulting veneer of frost that coats the picturesque Parisian suburb of Louveciennes, where the artist lived at the time. This painting depicts the landscape in late fall or early winter, just as the trees lose their leaves and frost begins to form. The sun rises and casts long shadows, melting the ephemeral frost.
Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Pissarro fled to England. While abroad, he studied English landscape painting, including the works of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, and incorporated elements of their style into his own painting technique, as evident in this humble scene of the French countryside with particular attention paid to the rendering of light and atmosphere.
Excerpt from
Heather MacDonald, DMA label copy, 2015.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid~View another depiction of Louveciennes by Camille Pissarro.
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris~Learn about the working relationship between Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne from 1865-1885.
Notes
Created in 1871
Pissarro was at the height of his powers in 1871, when he painted this compact and subtle study of morning light playing on a street near his home in Louveciennes. Unable to enlist in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War because of his Danish citizenship, Pissarro fled France at the end of 1870 and remained in exile in London until July 1871. When he returned to France, he found that his house had been ransacked by the German army and that many of his early paintings had been destroyed. Rather than being dissuaded by this setback, Pissarro commenced a campaign of landscapes representing Louveciennes that are among the greatest of his career. All the pictures benefit greatly from his time in England, not only because he was able to paint with fellow exiles Monet, Sisley, and Daubigny during that year, but also because he had studied the paintings, oil sketches, and watercolors by Constable and Turner in public collections in London. This injection of pictorial energy from earlier in the century was all that Pissarro needed to solidify his position as one of the most prominent landscape painters of the century. Whether large or small, his paintings summarize more than a decade of study, both from nature and from the greatest painters of nature. This small canvas was painted late in 1871 in a successful attempt to trap in paint one of nature's most elusive moods during autumn and winter. On clear, cold nights, the dew that gathers on the dead leaves and grasses freezes, and in the light of dawn, the entire landscape is cloaked in a white crystalline covering that disappears as soon as it is warmed by the sun. This effect - in French, "gelée blanche," in English, "hoarfrost," or more poetically, "morning frost" - was a particular favorite of Pissarro, who preferred it to painting snow effects. The challenges in representing it are enormous because the frost melts so quickly in the sun. For this reason, Pissarro prepared a small canvas, working on it only during clear late-fall or early-winter mornings and waiting for the morning frost, so that, with whitened mixtures of his colors, he could lay a frosting of white paint on the roughened surface of a painting that was essentially finished. All of the old labels on the painting identify its site as Poissy, a hillside town further west of Paris than Louveciennes. Pissarro is not known to have visited Poissy, and his son Ludovic-Rodo identified the site as Louveciennes, where Pissarro lived throughout the winter of 1871-1872, and where he produced all the other paintings that survive from that winter (Pissarro 1989, vol. 2, no. 127). For that reason, we conclude that the painting was made in Louveciennes, as catalogued.
Richard Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas Museum of Art, 1995), 45.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location and place of origin: Louveciennes (inhabited place/France): TGN: 7009311
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
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