Cleveland Museum of Art

Edge of the Woods Near L'Hermitage, Pontoise

Camille Pissarro

Date

1879

Medium

oil on fabric

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Born to a French-Jewish family on St. Thomas island in the Caribbean, Pissarro painted this monumental landscape when he was desperately poor and struggling to sell his paintings. It depicts a man slumbering in the sun-dappled backwoods of the Hermitage, a rural village near Pontoise, where the artist had been living since 1872. Restricting his palette to pure hues, Pissarro applied brushstrokes in systematic diagonal patterns, producing an effect that he likened to knitting. This canvas was included in the fourth Impressionist exhibition of 1879. A goat seen from the back standing next to the figure in blue laying in the grass invites the viewer to step inside this serene and beautiful setting.

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