Description
Along with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro pursued the theme of snow throughout his career, producing nearly 100 “snow” paintings. In 1879 France experienced an extraordinarily severe winter, which Pissarro explored in this and other works painted at his home in Pontoise, 30 miles west of Paris, along the Seine River. In Rabbit Warren, snow covers the ground, houses, and vegetation in a frothy coat that resulted from the artist’s vigorous brushwork. Throughout, small spots of color in the chimneys, greenish shrubs, and clothing of the man at right punctuate what is otherwise a predominately yellowish white and uninhabited fragment of nature.
Provenance
The artist (d. 1903); given to Julie Pissarro (artist’s wife), Paris, by 1892 [per Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition Camille Pissarro, exh. cat. (E. Ménard et Cie, 1892), p. 23, cat. 11]; by descent to her son, Ludovic-Rodolphe (Rodo) Pissarro, Paris, 1904 [this and the seven following per Pissarro and Snollaerts 2005]; sold jointly to Durand-Ruel, Paris, and Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, Aug. 7, 1918; share sold by Durand-Ruel, Paris, to Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, Mar. 12, 1920. Georges Petit Paris, by Mar. 31, 1924; sold to Prat, Mar. 31, 1924. Sam Salz, New York, around 1958. Martin and Sidney Zimet, New York, by Jan. 11, 1963; half share sold to M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Jan. 11, 1963 [per the M. Knoedler & Co., New York, stock book for Feb. 1959–Dec. 1970 (no. 8436, as La Gareane [sic] a Pontoise, Effet de Neige), copy in curatorial object file]; sold to Marshall Field, Chicago, by June 1964 [per Committee on Earlier Painting and Sculpture minutes, June 10, 1964, on file in Museum Registration, Art Institute of Chicago]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, beginning in June 1964 [in undivided fractional interests, receiving final fractional interest for one hundred percent ownership in 1965].
