Brief Report

This painting remained in the possession of the family after Camille Pissarro's death and only came on to the art market after 1921. It shows a large farmstead on the banks of the River Epte at Bazincourt, which was often depicted by the artist. Pissarro was able to see the building and the large walnut tree from the second floor of his own house [Pissarro/ Durand-Ruel Snollaerts 2005]. The artist used a commercially stretched, very fine canvas in the standard F15 size F15 (54.0 x 65.0 cm) pre-primed with a standard cream ground (fig. 8). Before embarking on the painting, Pissarro planned the composition by making a detailed drawing in dark blue applied with a fine brush (figs 9, 10, 14), much of which can still be seen along the outlines of the motifs. His next step was to compose all the parts of the picture using a very open manner of painting, consisting of short, often curved and sometimes cruciform brush-strokes. The paints were applied wet-in-wet throughout. In many places the pale ground was left visible. It is precisely these places that at a later date were cursorily covered with predominantly greenish- blue brush-strokes in the foreground and in the trees, in a manner imitating the existing brushwork (figs 13, 15). These additions were not carried out by Pissarro himself, however, as evidenced not only very clearly by the UV fluorescence photograph and false-colour IR reflectogram, but also by an illustration of the painting in a list of Pissarro's works that appeared in 1939, which shows that these changes had not yet been made at that date [Pissarro/Venturi 1939]. The manner and extent of the additions, carried out presumably only after 1939, suggest that this open painting technique and the frequent exposure of the pale ground were understood to be signs that the painting was incomplete, and that the additions were meant to rectify this. The fact that the coloration deviates from the original also points to the fact that someone was seeking to enliven the colours of the landscape as a whole. The initials in the bottom left-hand corner appear black, but are in fact dark blue, and on closer inspection can be seen to have been stamped. It is not known by whom this was done, or when, but it pre-dates the additions discussed above (present on the pre-1939 photo) (figs 7, 16).

Camille Pissarro
Farm in Bazincourt, 1884, oil on canvas, 54.1 x 65.1 cm, WRM Dep. FC 693

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, lined


Fig. 03

Raking light


Fig. 04

Transmitted light


Fig. 05

UV fluorescence; the later additions are characterized by the turquoise fluorescence of the brushstrokes, predominantly in the foreground and in the trees


Fig. 06

False-colour IR reflectogram, the painted additions are represented here in magenta to violet


Fig. 07

Details, stamped initials in incident light (top) and under UV (bottom)


Fig. 08

Preparation of the canvas: bubbles are discernible in the size (top left); cream-coloured ground (bottom left), microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm); and detail with the turnover edge of the very fine canvas, which was later lined (far right)


Fig. 09

Underdrawing not covered by paint, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 10

Underdrawing lines, charcoal particles and blue paint are mixed (top); the two lower illustrations however do not exclude the possibility of two independent applications in two phases, as both the charcoal particles and the blue brush-drawing appear independently of each other, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 11

Detail, horizon


Fig. 12

Impasto, wet-in-wet paint application, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 13

Detail, paint applied in dots and dashes in the region of the tree; the various bluish-green brushstrokes are not by Pissarro (cf. figs 5, 6, 14, 15)


Fig. 14

Mapping of the underdrawing (in blue), to the extent that it is visible under the microscope and not covered by the subsequent painting


Fig. 15

Mapping (in red) of the later additions by another hand


Fig. 16

Historic photograph dating from pre-1939, original state without painted additions