Camille Pissarro

French, born Saint Thomas, 1830-1903

La ferme à Montfoucault (Farm at Montfoucault), 1874

oil on canvas

support: 21 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches (54.61 x 65.4 cm); framed: 31 x 35 3/8 x 4 inches (78.74 x 89.85 x 10.16 cm)

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Bequest of Miss Gertrude Watson, 1938

1938:16

More Details

Inscriptions

signature, dated / lower right / C. Pissarro. 1874

Provenance

Sauphar, until April 1900;
to Durand-Ruel, Paris;
sold at the Vienna Secession, 1903;
[?] Paul Cassirer, Berlin;
Gertrude Watson, Buffalo and Pittsfield, Massachusetts;
bequeathed to the Albright Art Gallery, 1938

Class

Paintings

Work Type

Oil painting

This information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms

In the 1860s, Camille Pissarro began visiting the farm estate of Ludovic Piette (French, 1826–1877), a close friend and fellow painter, located at Montfoucault on the Mayenne River in eastern Brittany. Pissarro arrived at the farm in the fall of 1874, following the first Impressionist exhibition, hoping to focus on images of “the true countryside.” Along with Farm at Montfoucault, he completed numerous compositions of women engaged in their daily routines there. However, the artist was still struggling to develop his style of Impressionism. In a letter to French writer and critic Théodore Duret (1838–1927), Pissarro wrote, “I haven’t worked badly here. I have been tackling figures and animals. I have several genre pictures. I am rather chary [hesitant] about going in for a branch of art in which first-rate artists have so distinguished themselves. It is a very bold thing to do, and I am afraid of making a complete failure of it.”

Label from Humble and Human: An Exhibition in Honor of Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., February 2–May 26, 2019