Camille Pissarro, The fence, 1872 by Atelier Liesjes

About "Camille Pissarro, The fence, 1872"

by Atelier Liesjes

About the artwork

We look slightly down on a bare, gnarled tree near a grey, unpaved path leading back to a hamlet in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so many details are unclear. To the left, the grey tree trunk sways to the left as the branches of its skeletal canopy cover almost the width of the painting. The path extends from the bottom right corner of the painting into the distance, around a trellis-like fence, which also runs the width of the canvas. To our right and away from us, a person wearing brown trousers, a sky-blue shirt and a grey cap leans his forearms on the chest-high fence while presumably talking to the woman standing on the other side. She is wearing a long navy blue dress with a sea-blue apron and a brown hat. The land enclosed within the fence is painted with bands of peanut brown and sage green. Another woman, dressed in a slate-blue skirt, sky-blue shirt and white cap, walks away from us along the path carrying a stick or walking stick. To her right is a thicket of loosely dyed moss-green and rust-brown foliage. Across a ravine in the distance, a white fence separates us from the small village. The buildings have white or beige walls and sloping terracotta red, brown or spiky blue roofs. Behind these structures, flax-brown trees stand out against a pale blue sky with downy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark brown in the bottom left corner: "C. Pissarro. 1872."
Camille Pissarro, born Jacob Abraham Pizarro (Charlotte Amalie, 10 July 1830 - Paris, 12 November 1903) was a French Impressionist painter. Pissarro was always looking for new forms, becoming one of the most innovative among Impressionists.