Pissarro

Posts Tagged 'Pissarro'

NEW WEBSITE — PISSARRO’S PLACES

Published April 10, 2013 Art , Books Leave a Comment
Tags: American Library in Paris, Normandie Impressionniste Festival, Pissarro, Pissarro's Places

The new website for PISSARRO’S PLACES is now live on the web! Check it out and let us know what you think.

http://www.pissarrosplaces.com

There is a link on the website for your comments and we look forward to hearing from you.

Will you be in Paris on May 22? If so, please accept this invitation to hear Ann Saul talk about

PISSARRO’S PLACES

in a slide-lecture presentation at 7:30 at

The American Library in Paris

10 Rue du Général Camou 75007 Paris

PISSARRO’S PLACES

is honored to be one of the official publications of the

NORMANDIE IMPRESSIONNISTE FESTIVAL OF 2013

PISSARRO’S PLACES — Announcing the book launch!

Published April 9, 2013 Art Leave a Comment
Tags: book launch, Pissarro, Pissarro's Places, sensations genius

PISSARRO’S PLACES tells his story in a fresh and different way—exploring the places he painted and his “sensations” as he translated them into brushstrokes on his canvas. In his landscapes, you almost feel the sun and the wind in the trees. In his city paintings, you sense the hustle and bustle of traffic. This was his genius.

Rather than settling for the familiar, Pissarro courageously put himself into new situations in pursuit of different and exciting motifs. With PISSARRO’S PLACES, you see those places through his eyes. All the paintings featured in the book are located in public museums and are accessible to the public.

“I thought I knew every nook and cranny of Pissarro’s varied relations throughout the world, but you’ve just taught us there are many places we had missed, so many details we had not seen.” Joachim Pissarro, great-grandson of Camille Pissarro and preeminent art historian

Visit the website to learn more about PISSARRO’S PLACES! http://www.pissarrosplaces.com (After 4/10/13)

The regular list price is $39.99.

For the book launch until June 1, the price will be $29.99.

You can also order the book by emailing pissarrosplaces@gmail.com

or by writing Ann Saul, 225 S. 18th Street, Unit 510, Philadelphia, PA 19103.

PISSARRO’S PLACES ARE IN NORMANDY THIS SUMMER!!

Published March 22, 2013 Art 1 Comment
Tags: 2013, book launch, Caen, Dieppe, Giverny, Le Havre, Normandie Impressionniste Festival, Normandy, Pissarro, Pissarro's Places, Rouen

OF COURSE, you say. Everyone knows that Pissarro painted in Rouen, Le Havre, and Dieppe, all of them in the heart of Normandy!! But this is 2013 and there’s more!

PISSARRO’S PLACES has just been chosen to be part of the

Normandie Impressionniste Festival 2013!

Last week the Scientific Committee of the Festival reviewed material from the book PISSARRO’S PLACES and gave it a place among a few other publications officially endorsed by the Festival! They will soon place the book on their website on their Publications page. PISSARRO’S PLACES is, in fact, the only English-language book to be included.

The first Normandie Impressionniste Festival was held in 2010, and it took France by storm, drawing locals and tourists alike to a summer full of artistic events, including a superb art exhibition at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rouen.

The 2013 Festival promises to surpass the last one, with four superb art exhibitions in museums at Rouen, Caen, Giverny, and Le Havre. PISSARRO’S PLACES fits in with all the exhibitions, especially with the one at Musée Malraux in Le Havre, Pissarro and the Ports. In fact, a whole chapter of the book PISSARRO’S PLACES is devoted to the city of Le Havre and Pissarro’s experiences painting their harbors.

The Normandie Impressionniste Festival has an extraordinary website in French, English and a host of other languages that describes all the events that run from late April through September. Check it out: http://www.normandie-impressionniste.eu/

PISSARRO’S PLACES will be published in April.

Watch for news of a website and a book launch promotion.

PISSARRO IN SPAIN — THIS SUMMER–IT’S PISSARRO!

Published February 14, 2013 Art 1 Comment
Tags: Pissarro, Dieppe, Eragny, London, landscape, Pontoise, Louveciennes, Impressionist, Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, 1896, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, places, Orchard.Museo Thyssen

The Orchard at Éragny, 1896, Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, PDR 1134

AN EXTRAORDINARY EXHIBITION IS OPENING IN JUNE IN MADRID!! Perhaps the gorgeous painting shown above will be among those in the exhibition at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Here’s the full story from their superb English website (http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/home)

From 04 June to 15 September 2013

In the summer of 2013 the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza will be presenting the first monographic exhibition in Spain on the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). A key figure within Impressionism (he wrote the movement’s foundational letter and was the only one of its artists to take part in all eight Impressionist exhibitions from 1874 to 1886), Pissarro was nonetheless eclipsed by the enormous popularity of his friends and colleagues, in particular Claude Monet. The exhibition includes more than 70 works with the aim of restoring Pissarro’s reputation and presenting him as one of the great pioneers of modern art. Landscape, the genre that prevailed in his output, will be the principal focus of this exhibition, which offers a chronologically structured tour of the places where the artist lived and painted: Louveciennes, Pontoise and Éragny, as well as cities such as Paris, London, Rouen, Dieppe and Le Havre. While Pissarro is traditionally associated with the rural world, to which he devoted more than three decades of his career, at the end of his life he shifted his attention to the city and his late output is dominated by urban views. Curated by Guillermo Solana, this exhibition will subsequently be shown at the CaixaForum, Barcelona.

THE TIMING IS EXCELLENT TO SEE PISSARRO AND THE PORTS IN LE HAVRE, FRANCE AND PISSARRO IN MADRID, SPAIN THIS SUMMER.

STUNNING PISSARRO PAINTING –AUCTION RESULTS

Published February 6, 2013 Art Leave a Comment
Tags: 1872, barges. London, factories, industrialization, leisure, Louveciennes, Pissarro, pleasure, Port-Marly, private collection, Seine, Sotheby's

The Seine at Port-Marly, c. 1872, PDR 236

This gorgeous Pissarro painting was auctioned yesterday at Sotheby’s. The final price was 914,850 GBP or in US $1,431,690. How fortunate is that lucky buyer!!

See the previous blog for more information on this painting and another one painted in that same location.

PISSARRO PAINTING AT SOTHEBY’S IS A REAL PRIZE!!

Published January 31, 2013 Art 1 Comment
Tags: 1872, barges. London, factories, industrialization, leisure, Louveciennes, Pissarro, pleasure, Port-Marly, private collection, Seine, Sotheby's

The Seine at Port-Marly, c. 1872, PDR 236

If only I were in London this weekend to see this lovely Camille Pissarro painting which will be auctioned at Sotheby’s next week. (PDR 236) This stunning canvas has been in private hands since it was created in 1872 and has not often been exhibited. The pre-sale show at Sotheby’s may be the only opportunity for people like me to see it before it goes back into another private collection.

Painted when Pissarro returned to Louveciennes after the Franco-Prussian war, it is very similar to a painting in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. (PDR 229) That one shows a roofed washhouse built out over the river where women gathered to do the laundry. In the Sotheby painting, the washhouse does not appear. The view suggests that the artist may have carried his easel onto the floor of the washhouse itself which puts him in the midst of the reflections on the Seine.

The entire right side of the canvas is dominated by a bathing house, where the French working class people would go to enjoy their weekends and holidays. Tucked away in a large bank of trees, it suggests leisure and pleasure. The left side of the painting reveals a strong counterpoint. Under a vast expanse of open sky, factories and barges line the other river bank, reminding us of the industrialization underway. A boat is in the center of the river, and it is impossible to tell whether he is headed back to work or rowing toward a free afternoon. How lucky the person will be who wins this beautiful prize at the Sotheby’s sale next week!

*PDR designates the numbers assigned to these paintings in PISSARRO:CRITICAL CATALOGUE (2005).

More about Pissarro’s time and paintings in Louveciennes in PISSARRO’S PLACES, to be published this April by Art Book Annex.com

PISSARRO EXHIBITION AT LE HAVRE THIS SUMMER

Published January 27, 2013 Art Leave a Comment
Tags: 1903, Dieppe, docks, jetty, Le Havre, Musee Andre Malraux, NORMANDY IMPRESSIONIST FESTIVAL, Pissarro, Pissarro's Places, Rouen, sailboats, semaphore, ships

Entrance to the Harbour at Le Havre With the

West Breakwater, Sunlight, Morning

1903

The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN

PDR 1525

Will this wonderful painting by Pissarro be among those in the new exhibition in Le Havre that opens April 29? The exhibition, part of the NORMANDY IMPRESSIONIST FESTIVAL, is called Pissarro and the Ports–Rouen, Dieppe, Le Havre and will be at the Musée d’Art moderne André Malraux – Le Havre from 27 April–29 September 2013. Of course, I will be in Le Havre to see if this intriguing painting will travel from Memphis Tennessee for the exhibition!

At the entrace to Le Havre harbor, the jetty and semaphore, the flag-bedecked structure on the right, are clearly visible. The semaphore was used to transmit messages to ships long before they approached the harbor. The large variety of flags may indicate weather changes or heavy traffic in the harbor.

Two sailboats on the left stay well out of the way as a small steamboat enters the harbor. On the actual canvas, we can see two dark images on the horizon (not easily visible in photographs), possibly other ships waiting their turn to dock. Could Pissarro have been using binoculars to look out to sea? They would have been useful for spotting details from his balcony window.

Pissarro’s strong asymmetrical composition accents the colorful semaphore. He placed it at the point of a sharp angle formed by the dark diagonal of the breakwater and the ocean’s horizon. Like many of the Le Havre series, this painting devotes most of the canvas to the sky. The bright sunlight creates long shadows on the dock and pushes away the thin gauzy clouds. Its reflection has tinted the calm sea a light translucent green, which fades into a thin lilac strip where the ocean meets the sky. Despite the obvious nautical activity on this busy morning, the sense of calmness is heightened by the lightness of the sky and sea.

This historic photo showing the same dock demonstrate’s Pissarro’s genius for making something beautiful out of a scene that could be thought mundane!

PISSARRO’S PLACES, the book, features a whole chapter on Le Havre and includes another painting by Pissarro of the docks, one of the two that Pissarro sold to the Musee Malraux in Le Havre. The book will be published in April. More details to come…..

Why Did Pissarro Do This?

Published January 18, 2013 Art 1 Comment
Tags: 1867, Durand-Ruel, Guggenheim Museum, Impressionism, Jean-Baptiste Faure, l'Hermitage, Pissarro, Pontoise

The Hills at l’Hermitage, Pointoise, c. 1867, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

PDR 121

Always pushing the edge of creativity and inventiveness, Pissarro painted The Hills at L’Hermitage, Pontoise in 1867, seven years before the first Impressionist Exhibition. But it demonstrates all the elements of Impressionism—the light palette, a scene of everyday life, and depiction of the weather.

It is the largest painting ever made by Pissarro. Paul Durand-Ruel, his agent, bought the painting in March 1873 and sold it the same day to Jean-Baptiste Faure, a famous operatic baritone who sang in Paris and London.

The people in Pissarro’s paintings are integral to its composition, but they are not there to tell a story. In fact, they often raise questions that have no answers. In this painting, a woman and little girl are talking to another woman. Most scholars agree that they are in fact Julie, the painter’s wife, and his daughter Minette. They are talking to a woman whose back is towards us, but we can see from her arms clasped behind her back that she has dark skin. This is especially noticeable because the skin of Julie and Minette are very light, almost pink.

Who is this dark-skinned woman? Is she an African or a gypsy woman? What is the conversation between these two women from obviously different backgrounds? As provocative as this question may be, the women are just two small elements in the painting. The difference in skin-color is so subtle that it goes unnoticed by many viewers. When you remember that everything in a painting is due to the artist’s choice, you wonder why Pissarro raised this unanswerable question.

PISSARRO’S PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE THAMES IN LONDON

Published August 8, 2012 Art 2 Comments
Tags: "Big Ben", Charing Cross Bridge, Cleopatra's Needle, ferry boats, Houses of Parliament, London, Olympics, paddlewheeler, Pissarro, transportation, Westminster Abbey

Charing Cross Bridge, London 1890

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC PDR 884

The Thames is one of the major avenues of transportation for visitors to the Olympics in London. This is nothing new, as Pissarro shows in this panorama of Charing Cross Bridge with the crowded ferry boats.

Pissarro emphasizes the expansiveness of the Charing Cross Bridge by choosing a canvas half again as wide as it is high. The bridge is just a narrow band through the center of the painting. Even though the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and other important buildings are in the background, they are subdued into pastel silhouettes. Even Cleopatra’s Needle on the right is subdued to anonymity.

All the big boats are placed on the right side with one large passenger boat heading straight into view. On the left is one small sail boat with a string of tiny crafts disappearing into the canvas edge. The center of the canvas contains nothing more than a span of water reflecting the sky. In the background is the Clock Tower, known as “Big Ben” which was completed in 1859. Pissarro was concerned that well-known landmarks be correct, and as he was finishing this painting in his studio in Eragny, he wrote to his niece Esther Isaacson in London to confirm the exact placement of various details.

The sky dominates more than half of the painting. What appear to be white puffy clouds are made up of pale pinks, blues, mauves in tiny comma-like strokes. The colors are the same ones seen on distant buildings. Only one sliver of blue sky is visible cutting across the right upper corner of the canvas. The river reflects the same colors, the pinks, blues and mauves, laid down in wavelets.

The steam boat plowing through the water in the lower right foreground was powered by a steam-driven paddlewheeler, a model that had not been seen on the Seine at that time. The deck was loaded with passengers, who according to Pissarro created a “mass of dots that give these boats their characteristic appearance.” The following year in his studio, Pissarro painted another version of this scene on a less expansive canvas, moving all the boats closer to the center.

PISSARRO–LOVED BY PEOPLE WORLDWIDE

Published April 24, 2012 Art Leave a Comment
Tags: Impressionist, Pissarro, puzzling, worldwide

This blog about Impressionist Camille Pissarro (artbookannex.com) has just counted 300 readers in less than two months! Readers include art lovers from 19 countries—Argentina to the US, and five continents. Most (84) are in the US, with France coming in second (39), but the list also includes Serbia, Singapore, Lithuania, and Thailand. Thank you so much, merci beaucoup, and in every other language for sharing our thoughts on the beautiful, interesting, and often puzzling art of Pissarro.

Ann Saul, art writer

ART BOOK ANNEX

Posts Tagged 'Pissarro'

NEW WEBSITE — PISSARRO’S PLACES

PISSARRO’S PLACES — Announcing the book launch!

PISSARRO’S PLACES ARE IN NORMANDY THIS SUMMER!!

PISSARRO IN SPAIN — THIS SUMMER–IT’S PISSARRO!

Pissarro

STUNNING PISSARRO PAINTING –AUCTION RESULTS

PISSARRO PAINTING AT SOTHEBY’S IS A REAL PRIZE!!

PISSARRO EXHIBITION AT LE HAVRE THIS SUMMER

Why Did Pissarro Do This?

PISSARRO’S PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE THAMES IN LONDON

PISSARRO–LOVED BY PEOPLE WORLDWIDE

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