Camille Pissarro

In September 1892 Camille Pissarro spent two weeks at the country home of writer Octave Mirbeau in Les Damps in the northern French department of Eure. In addition to his activity as a novelist and playwright, Mirbeau had also distinguished himself as an art critic, particularly as a connoisseur of Impressionism. Pissarro, like his fellow artist Claude Monet, was friendly with Mirbeau and maintained a lively correspondence with him. Both men were sympathetic to the ideas of the anarchist movement, which they sought to embody in their literary and painterly work.

During his stay with Mirbeau, Pissarro executed four large-scale views of his friend’s garden—a passion the artist shared with Monet, with whom he discussed questions of modern horticulture. Pissarro’s painting shows the floral splendor of the garden in the radiant light of an autumn afternoon. Powerful accents of red, pink, rose, yellow, and orange stand out in a composition dominated by green. Motifs suggesting human activity—the trellis and the chicken coop—are eclipsed by the luxuriant vegetation, into which the viewer enters both visually and metaphorically through the narrow, rose-colored path to the right.

At the time this painting was made, the motif of the garden had become well-established among the Impressionists as a symbol for perfect harmony between man and nature—a core idea of the anarchistic literature with which both Mirbeau and Pissarro were familiar. Later, proponents of Neo-Impressionism such as Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross would also embrace this theme in their works. In March 1893 Pissarro’s painting, along with his three other views of Mirbeau’s garden, appeared in a major solo exhibition in the Paris gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel, where they were exhibited under the title Série de jardins.

In the three-volume catalogue raisonné of Pissarro’s painting compiled by Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Garden and Henhouse at Octave Mirbeau’s, Les Damps is listed as no. 955 (vol. 3, p. 626).

Daniel Zamani

Exposition d'œuvres récentes de Camille Pissarro, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, March 15–30, 1893, no. 29 (Poulailler)

Four Masters of Impressionism, Acquavella Galleries, New York, October 24–November 30, 1968, no. 64

Retrospective Camille Pissarro, Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo, March 9–April 9, 1984; Fukuoka Art Museum, April 25–May 20, 1984; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, May 26–July 1, 1984 , no. 44

Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020

Côté jardin. De Monet à Bonnard, Musée des impressionnismes, Giverny, April 1–November 1, 2021

December 3, 1892, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, purchased from the artist
June 1897, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, acquired from the above, until at least 1949
n.d., Private collection, Switzerland
n.d., Maurice Ferrier, Geneva
ca. 1968, Acquavella Galleries, New York
1978, Irwin H. Kramer and Terry Allen Kramer, Philadelphia, acquired from the above
November 11, 2019, Christie’s, New York, lot 9a, consigned by the above

Exposition d'œuvres récentes de Camille Pissarro, exh. cat. Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris 1893, no. 29

Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro: Son art – son œuvre, Paris 1939, no. 808, p. 194, plate 166

Four Masters of Impressionism, exh. cat. Acquavella Galleries, New York 1968, no. 64

Retrospective Camille Pissarro, exh. cat. Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo 1984, no. 44

Janine Bailly-Herzberg (ed.), Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, vol. 3 (1891–1894), Paris 1988, p. 250 (no. 807), 257/58 (no. 816), 260/61 (no. 818), 269 (no. 827), 269/70 (no. 828)

Pierre Michel and Jean-François Nivet (ed.), Octave Mirbeau: Correspondance avec Camille Pissarro, Charente 1990, no. 58, p. 136

Martha Ward: Pissarro. Neo-Impressionism and the Spaces of the Avant-Garde, Chicago 1996, p. 254

Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings, vol. 3, Milan 2005, no. 955, p. 626, ill. p. 626