This watercolour is unique in Pissarro’s career, as it is the only watercolour depicting the rue de l'Hermitage, on which Pissarro lived with his family throughout much of the 1870s. Pissarro painted the street seven times, and one pencil drawing also survives. Neither the drawing nor the watercolour relates in any direct way to a painting, clearly indicating that for Pissarro in the early and mid-1870s each work of art was made independently, rather than in the traditional hierarchy of drawing, watercolour, oil sketch, and finished painting.
Stylistic evidence suggests that this watercolour was made in the early or mid-1870s, when Pissarro concentrated on street scenes with balanced architectural masses. The interplay of red, green, and blue and the contrast of large areas of white and dark give the work a visual strength that belies its small size. It was made in a medium that Pissarro used throughout his life but that, curiously, was without a particularly distinguished history in French art. The pencil initials at the lower right indicate that Pissarro himself considered this sheet to be finished.
[Watercolour, pencil, gouache on woven paper]
No comments:
Post a Comment