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We look slightly down onto a bare, gnarled tree near a gray, dirt path, which leads back to a hamlet in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so many details are indistinct. To our left, the gray tree trunk sways to the left as the branches of its skeletal canopy nearly span the width of the painting. The path extends from the lower right corner of the painting into the distance, around a lattice-like fence, which also runs across the width of the canvas. To our right and facing away from us, a person wearing brown pants, a sky-blue shirt, and a gray cap leans his forearms on the chest-high fence as he presumably talks with the woman standing on the other side. She wears a long navy-blue dress with a sea-blue apron and a tan hat. The land enclosed within the fence is painted with bands of peanut brown and sage green. Another woman wearing a slate-blue skirt, a sky-blue shirt, and a white cap walks away from us down the path using a cane or walking stick. To her right is a thicket of loosely painted moss-green and rust-brown foliage. Across a gully in the distance, a white picket fence separates us from the small village. The buildings have white or beige walls and pitched terracotta-red, tan, or denim-blue roofs. Beyond these structures, flax-brown trees are silhouetted against a light blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark brown in the lower left corner: “C. Pissarro. 1872.”

Camille Pissarro

The Fence, 1872

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 87

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 37.8 x 45.7 cm (14 7/8 x 18 in.)

framed: 54.3 x 63.2 x 5 cm (21 3/8 x 24 7/8 x 1 15/16 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

1985.64.31

Artists / Makers

Camille Pissarro (artist) French, born St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1830 - 1903

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower left: C. Pissarro. 1872

Provenance

(sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 18 February 1878, no. 59, as La Haie); purchased by Georges de Bellio [1828-1894];[1] by inheritance to his daughter, Mme Ernest Donop de Monchy [née Victorine de Bellio, 1863-1958] until at least 1937. (Paul Rosenberg et Cie., Paris) and (César de Hauke, Paris), by 1939.[2] Arthur Goldsmith, Paris; sold 1955 to (Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich);[3] sold that same year to (Georges Seligmann, Inc., New York); sold 1955 to Paul Mellon [1907-1999], Upperville, Virginia; gift 1985 to NGA.

[1] The painting is no. 104 in the inventory of the de Bellio collection, published by Remus Niculescu in Paragone 249 (November 1970): 68.

[2] According to Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro. Son Art--Son Oeuvre, 2 vols., San Francisco, 1989 (reprint of 1939 edition): no. 135.

[3] Goldsmith and Feilchenfeldt per Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings, 3 vols., Milan, Paris, and New York, 2005: 2:no. 231.

Associated Names

Bellio, Georges de, Dr.
Donop de Monchy, Ernest, Mme
Drouot, Hôtel
Feilchenfeldt, Walter, Dr.
Georges Seligmann, Inc.
Goldsmith, Arthur
Hauke, César Mange de
Mellon, Paul
Rosenberg & Co., Paul P.

Exhibition History

1930: Centenaire de la naissance de Camille Pissarro, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 1930, no. 17.

1956: Pictures Collected by Yale Alumni, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1956, no. 90, repro.

1966: French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 26, repro.

1995: Landscapes of France: Impressionism and its Rivals, Hayward Gallery, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1995-1996, no. 67, repro.

2005: Camille Pissarro, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005-2006, no. 10, repro.

2013: Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art, Museo dell'Ara Pacis Augustae, Rome (exhibition title in this venue: Impressionist Gems); California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo, Seattle Art Museum, 2013-2016.

Bibliography

1939: Pissarro, Ludovic and Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro, son art, son oeuvre. 2 vols. Paris, 1939:1:98, no. 135, as La Haie, Paysage D'Automne; 2:pl. 27.

1970: Niculescu, Remus. "Georges de Bellio, l'ami des Impressionnistes (II)." Paragone 249 (November 1970): 68, no. 104

1970: Niculescu, Remus. "Georges de Bellio, l'ami des Impressionnistes (I)." Paragone 247 (September 1970): 54.

2005: Pissarro, Joachim and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of the Paintings, 3 vols., Milan, Paris and New York, 2005: II:no. 231, repro.