Provenance
The artist's daughter Jeanne Pissarro-Bonin [Mme Alexandre Bonin, 1881-1948], Paris. (Galerie Georges Petit, Paris); sold 8 October 1919 to (Mancini, Paris).[2] Emile Lernoud, Buenos Aires, c. 1924; Dr. Carlos Zubizarreta, Buenos Aires, by 1932;[1] acquired 1954 by (Wildenstein & Co., New York); acquired February 1955 by Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, New York;[3] gift (partial and promised) 1991 to NGA.
[1] The painting was lent by Zubizaretta to a 1932 exhibition in Buenos Aires.
[2] Previous owners Petit and Mancini are per Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, _Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings_, 3 vols., Milan and Paris, 2005: 3:no. 125.
[3] The Rockefeller purchase date is according to _Art for the Nation_, Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1991: 156.
Accession Number
1991.101.1
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 81 x 100 cm (31 7/8 x 39 3/8 in.) | framed: 109.8 x 128.3 x 8.8 cm (43 1/4 x 50 1/2 x 3 7/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting Canvas French
Background & Context
Background Story
Landscape at Les Pâtis, Pontoise (1868) depicts the countryside near Pontoise, the town where Pissarro would live and paint for over two decades. Les Pâtis—a local place name for a specific area of fields and hills—provided Pissarro with the kind of working rural landscape that was his preferred subject. The year 1868 places this early in Pissarro's Pontoise period, which began in 1866 and would produce some of Impressionism's most important landscape paintings. Pontoise, at the confluence of the Oise and Viosne rivers northwest of Paris, offered rural subjects accessible from the capital by train. Pissarro's treatment of the Pontoise landscape demonstrates his characteristic approach: neither idealized nor merely topographical, the landscape is presented as a working environment where agricultural activity and natural beauty coexist. The fields of Les Pâtis—cultivated, productive, and shaped by generations of farming—are not wilderness but a humanized landscape that bears the marks of its cultivation. This democratic engagement with working landscape—Pissarro never painted the spectacular wilderness dear to the Hudson River School—distinguished his Impressionism from the beginning and influenced the movement's broader commitment to representing modern life's ordinary settings.
Cultural Impact
Pissarro's Pontoise landscapes influenced how the French rural landscape was represented in Impressionist art, establishing the working countryside as a significant artistic subject. The paintings influenced Cézanne, who worked alongside Pissarro at Pontoise and learned from his approach to landscape painting. The Pontoise subject also influenced how the Paris region's countryside was perceived, establishing its identity as a landscape of agricultural productivity rather than merely a suburb-in-waiting.
Why It Matters
This painting matters because it represents the beginning of Pissarro's most productive period—the Pontoise years that produced some of Impressionism's defining works and influenced the development of Cézanne. The Landscape at Les Pâtis, with its engagement with working rural scenery, establishes the democratic landscape principle that would characterize Pissarro's entire career.
