Painting Detail
Town Park in PontoiseArtist: Camille Pissarro
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 59.5x73.3 cm
Date: 1873
Genre: Landscape Painting
Source: Formerly in the collection of Otto Krebs, Holzdorf
Pontoise, a small town on the Oise about thirty kilometres from Paris, is very closely connected to Camille Pissarro's work. He lived there almost fifteen years. Pissarro was most drawn by nature, and the Oise and the hills and glades around Pontoise provided fine opportunity for the landscape painter. Even in Pontoise itself he found a motif that was essentially natural - the Jardin Publique, with its green wall of lush chestnut trees. In the present painting, the tree at the right forms a sort of curtain, and to the left, to give a kind of closure to the composition, Pissarro took pains with the shading necessary for overall balance. The middle ground is defined by the figure of a young girl. Finally, the dense clumps of trees form a firm backdrop to the whole scene. Pissarro depicts a modest provincial leisure of a small town that does not want to lag behind Paris. The present painting is of special note: it is not a pure landscape, but rather a combination landscape and genre composition.