Brief Report

This is one of a total of eight paintings which Camille Pissarro brought back to Eragny after his six-week stay in Varengeville in the late summer of 1899 [Pissarro/Durand-Ruel Snollaerts 2005, p. 797, cat. no. 1293, p. 800]. For the depiction of the orchard Pissarro chose a standard F10-size canvas pre-primed in pale grey and prestretched. Like many of the Impressionists, Pissarro had no problems with turning this format, actually designed for portraits, through 90 degrees in order to have a horizontal canvas on which to paint a landscape (fig.1). The stretcher, which is probably original, bears the registration mark of the Bourgeois Ainé firm, while the canvas verso bears the stencilled mark of the Parisian firm P. Contet (fig. 7). A particular feature of the painting method is the use of short, often semicircular brush- strokes, applied either wet-in-wet or wet-on-dry. For the first lay-in of the composition, for which there may have been no preparatory drawing, Pissarro applied the paint thinly, thus indicating the basic colours and shapes. As he progressed, the paint covered more and more of the surface and increased in pastosity. This is true not only of the pale blends, but also for the dark-green of the foliage of the trees (fig.3). To all appearances, Pissarro decided only at a late stage to include the cow in the foreground, as betrayed by the fact that there is green paint beneath, which elsewhere was not applied where other objects, e.g. tree-trunks, were planned. In spite of largely dense applications of paint in and on top of each other, the pale-grey ground remains visible between individual brushstrokes (fig. 8). In the composition these visible patches of ground create highlights, while their increasing presence in the peripheral regions represent a repeated characteristic of impressionistically captured impressions of nature. Not least for this reason it may be presumed that Pissarro painted this picture on the spot. Evidently satisfied with what he had created, he signed the picture immediately on completing it (fig. 6).

Camille Pissarro
Orchard in Varengeville, 1899, oil on canvas, 47.0 x 56.0 cm, WRM Dep. 850

Camille Pissarro

born on 10 July in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Danish West Indies,
died on 12 November 1903 in Éragny-sur-Epte

Brief report with complete data as downloadable pdf-file

Further illustrations:

Fig. 02

Verso, with dealer’s and manufacturer’s marks (see fig. 7)


Fig. 03

Raking light


Fig. 04

Transmitted light


Fig. 05

UV fluorescence


Fig. 06

Signature and detail of the letter “P”, whose dark-blue paint is partially blended with the paint-layer beneath, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 07

Details, canvas verso
with firm trademark
P. Contet and registration
mark of the firm
Bourgeois Ainé on
the centre bar of the
stretcher


Fig. 08

Pale grey ground
between different green
paint applications,
microscopic photograph
(M = 1 mm)


Fig. 09

Thin paint applications,
in some places spread
out, which belonged to
the compositional lay-in,
microscopic photograph
(M = 1 mm)


Fig. 10

Detail, unpainted areas
of ground in the region
of the house, revealing
clearly visible build-up
of paint from thin to
impasto, applied wet-
in-wet


Fig. 11

Paints of different colour taken up by the brush blend when the brush is applied to the canvas, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 12

Changes in the green
paint, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 13

Details, raking light photographs of the canvas recto and verso show cleavage and deformations of the canvas, which have been caused by the raising of individual patches of the paint layer


Fig. 14

Details; under UV
stimulation, the reddish-
brown remains of an
older, discoloured coat of
varnish in the crevices of
impasto paint applications show the typical
yellowish-green fluorescence of an aged resin-
ous coating, microscopic
photograph (M = 1 mm)