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Camille Pissarro
French, 1830–1903
Piette's House at Montfoucault
1874
During the winter of 1874, Pissarro visited his friend and fellow artist Ludovic Piette at his farmhouse in the village of Montfoucault, southwest of Paris. This painting shows the house and surrounding gardens blanketed in deep snow. The artist used a limited range of colors and worked quickly in the cold, leaving the bare canvas visible in places between areas of thickly applied paint.
Image Caption
Camille Pissarro, Piette's House at Montfoucault, 1874, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.826
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
18 1/4 x 27 in. (46.4 x 68.6 cm)
Frame: 24 1/4 x 33 x 2 1/4 in. (61.6 x 83.8 x 5.7 cm)
Object Number
1955.826
Acquisition
Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status
On View
Select Bibliography
London: Galerie Alex Reid & Lefèvre.. Salons de la peinture française.. June 1939.. Pissarro, Ludovico Rodo, and Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro, Son Art, Son Oeuvre. 2 volumes. Paris: P. Rosenberg, 1939. Venturi, Lionello. The Art of Camille Pissarro in Retrospect. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Durand-Ruel Galleries, 1941. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1963. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper.. Pissarro: His Life and Work.. New York: Horizon Press.. c. 1980.. Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery, London.. Camille Pissarro 1820-1903. Oct. 30, 1980-Jan. 11, 1981; Grand Palais, Paris, Jan. 30-April 27, 1981; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, May 19-Aug. 9, 1981.. 1980.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Hall, Donald, and Clifton C. Olds. Winter. Exhibition catalogue. Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 1986. Thomson, Richard. Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape and Rural Labor. Exhibition catalogue. London: The Herbert Press; New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1990. Clarke, Michael. "Review of Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape and Rural Labor: Glasgow, Burrell Collection, Camille Pissarro." Exhibition Reviews. The Burlington Magazine 132, no. 1047 (June 1990): 427–29. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Pissarro, Joachim. Camille Pissarro. New York: Abrams, 1993. Washington (D.C.). The Phillips Collection. Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige. Sept. 19, 1998-Jan. 3, 1999; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Jan. 30-May 2, 1999. Cat. by Charles S. Moffett et al. Belinda Thomson. Impressionism: Origins, Practice, Reception (World of Art). London: Thames and Hudson. 2000. Pissarro, Joachim and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts. Pissarro: Critical Catalogue pf Paintings. Vol. I-III. Paris: Wildenstein Institute Publications. 2005. Brettell, Richard et al. L'impressionnisme, de France et d'Amérique: Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas. Musée Fabre de Montpellier, June 2- September 30, 2007; Musée de Grenoble, October 20, 2007- January 20, 2008. Versailles: Artlys; Montpellier: Musée Fabre; Grenoble: Musée de Grenoble. 2007. Ganz, James A. and Richard R. Brettell. Great French Paintings from the Clark: Barbizon through Impressionism. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications; Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2011. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.
Provenance
Possibly Eugène Murer (Eugène-Auguste Meunier), Paris (d. 1906);¹ [Ambroise Vollard, Paris, until d. 1939];² [Étienne Bignou, Paris and New York, by March 1940]; [Sam Salz, Paris and New York, by May 1940, sold to Durand-Ruel, 4 March 1941];³ [Durand-Ruel, New York, sold to Clark, 6 March 1941]; Robert Sterling Clark (1941–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.
1. Distel 1990, p. 212, states that Murer owned this painting. Paul Gachet, Deux Amis des Impressionistes: Le Docteur Gachet et Murer, 1956, p. 177, notes that Murer sold his collection in 1896 to a number of dealers, including selling ten paintings to Ambroise Vollard (two by van Gogh, six by Cézanne, and two unspecified).
2. After Vollard’s death in July 1939, his collection was inherited by his brother Lucien and by Robert de Galea, the son of Vollard’s mistress. Presumably either Lucien Vollard or Robert de Galea sold the painting before March 1940 to Étienne Bignou, whose gallery had branches in Paris and New York. It seems likely that Bignou purchased the painting in Paris and transferred it to New York for exhibition in March 1940.
3. According to a comment in RSC’s diary, dated 1 February 1941, Sam Salz had acquired this painting “from Durand-Ruel’s in Paris through a second party.” Given that Bignou exhibited the work in New York in March 1940, this information appears to be inaccurate. Salz himself moved from Paris to New York in 1939.