INFORMATION TO USERS

This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this document, the quality of the reproduction is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted.

The following explanation of techniques is provided to help clarify markings or notations which may appear on this reproduction.

1.The sign or “target” for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is “Missing Page(s)”. If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting through an image and duplicating adjacent pages to assure complete continuity.

2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a round black mark, it is an indication of either blurred copy because of movement during exposure, duplicate copy, or copyrighted materials that should not have been filmed. For blurred pages, a good image of the page can be found in the adjacent frame. If copyrighted materials were deleted, a target note will appear listing the pages in the adjacent frame.

3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., is part of the material being photographed, a definite method of “sectioning” the material has been followed. It is customary to begin filming at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. If necessary, sectioning is continued again-beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete.

4. For illustrations that cannot be satisfactorily reproduced by xerographic means, photographic prints can be purchased at additional cost and inserted into your xerographic copy. These prints are available upon request from the Dissertations Customer Services Department.

5. Some pages in any document may have indistinct print. In all cases the best available copy has been filmed.

University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8526270

Volkmar, Karl Franklin

CAMILLE PISSARRO’S "JARDINIERE" (1884-1885) IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS EARLY ’GENRE’ PAINTINGS: 1872-1886

The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1985

University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106

Copyright 1985

by Volkmar, Karl Franklin All Rights Reserved PLEASE NOTE:

In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a checkV mark .

1. Glossy photographs or pages______

2. Colored illustrations, paper or print______

3. Photographs with dark background y/

4. Illustrations are poor copyV

5. Pages with black marks, not original ______copy

6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of______page

7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages i/

8. Print exceeds margin requirements______

9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in______spine

10. Computer printout pages with indistinct______print

11. Page(s) ______lacking when material received, and not available from school or author.

12. Page(s)______seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows.

13. Two pages numbered . Text follows.

14. Curling and wrinkled p a g______e s

15. Dissertation contains pages with print at a slant, filmed as received______

16. O th e r______

University Microfilms International CAMILLE PISSARRO'S JARDINIERE (1884-1885)

IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS EARLY GENRE PAINTINGS: 1872-1886

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Karl Franklin Volkmar, B.S., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

1985

Reading Committee: Approved By

Franklin M. Ludden

Peter W. Gano Adviser Mathew Herban III Department of the History of Art Copyright by

Karl Franklin Volkmar

1985 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks go to Dr. Mathew Herban III for his guidance and encouragement through my studies and research. He was not only an advisor, but a mentor, and became a friend. I would also like to express my appreciation to Dr. Franklin M. Ludden who was there at the beginning and now, too, at this midpoint.

During my research, the assistance of Clara R.

Goldslager of the Interlibrary Loan Department, The Ohio

State University Library, was of inestimable value, as well as the rest of her staff. I would also like to thank the reference department at OSU, and the Fine Arts

Library staff. Many anonymous individuals at the

Cleveland Museum of Art Library, the Cleveland Public

Library, the library of the University of Michigan, and the University of California at Berkeley and Davis, and in the inter-library loan system, facilitated my research. Their patient handling of my queries helped smooth the path.

ii VITA

December 1, 1944 .... Born - Columbus, Ohio

1967 ...... B.S. in Bus., Miami Univeristy Oxford, Ohio

1976 ...... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... ii

VITA ...... iii

LIST OF F I G U R E S ...... v

INTRODUCTION ...... I

CHAPTER I

THE AROSA FOUR SEASONS SERIES (1872) 37

CHAPTER II

THREE APPLE HARVEST COMPOSITIONS (1881, 1882 & 1881-1886 ) 66

CHAPTER III \ THE JARDINIERE - APPLE, POTATO, AND CABBAGE HARVESTS AND THE FAIR OFST. MARTIN'S ...... 138

CHAPTER IV \ THE JARDINIERE -AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INSIGHT . . 191

CONCLUSION...... '...... 210

APPENDIX A ...... 225

APPENDIX B ...... 231

BIBLIOGRAPHY 237 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Le printemps (Spring). 1872. P&V 183, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas. (Source for illustration other than Pissarro and Venturi catalogue will be noted in parentheses.) ...... 258

2. L'gte (Summer). 1872. P&V 184, 55 x 120 cm, 21.65 x 47.24 in., oil on canvas...... 258

3. L'automne (Autumn). 1872. P&V 185, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas...... 259

4. L'hiver (Winter). 1872. P&V 186, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas...... 259

5. Portal of the Virgin, Northern portal on west facade, Notre Dame, Paris, 12th century. (Bottineau, Notre-Dame de Paris and the Sainte-Chapelle, figs. 61-62). . . . 260

6. The Limbourg Brothers, February, fol. 2v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 3)...... 261

7. The Limbourg Brothers, March, fol. 3v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 4)...... 262

8. The Limbourg Brothers, July, fol. 7v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 8)...... 263

9. The Limbourg Brothers, August, fol. 8v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 9)...... 264

v Figure Page

10. The Limbourg Brothers, October, fol. lOv, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 11)...... 265

11. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Spring. (The Earthly Paradise). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 242)...... 266

12. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Summer. (Ruth and Boaz). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 243)...... 266

13. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Autumn. (The Spies with the Grapes of the Promised Land). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 244)...... 267

14. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Winter. (The Flood). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46- 1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 245)...... 267

15. Jean Francois Millet, Spring. 1868-73. 86 x 111 cm,°33.86 x 43.70 in., oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 68 )...... 268

16. Jean Francois Millet, Summer, the Buckwheat Harvest, 'T>868-74. 85 x 111 cm, 33.46 x 43.70 in., unfinished oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 69 )...... 269

17. Jean Frangois Millet, Autumn. 1868-74. 85 x 110 cm, 33.46 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 70 )...... 270

18. Jean Frangpis Millet, Winter. 1868-74. 78.7 x 97.8 cm, 30.98 x 38.50 in., unfinished oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 71)...... 271

vi Figure Page

19. Portrait de Cezanne (Portrait of Cezanne). 1874. P&V 29 3, 73 x 60 cm, 28.74 x 23.62 in., oil on canvas...... 272

20. "Le soir soleil couchant," Sketchbook III, 68B, in Brettell and Lloyd, Catalogue of Drawings by Camille Pissarro, pencil on paper...... 273

21. L'hiver a Montfoucault (Effet de neige), (Winter at Montfoucault. Snow effect). 1875. P&V 328, 114 x 110 cm, 44.88 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas...... 274

22. L'automne (Etanq de Montfoucault), (Autumn. Pool of Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 329, 114 x 110 cm., 44.88 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas...... 275

23. L'^tang de Montfoucault. Effet d'hiver, (Pool of Montfoucault, Effect of Winter). 1874. P&V 275, 60 x 73 cm, 23.62 x 28.74 in., oil on canvas...... 276

24. L'^etang de Montfoucault, (Pool of Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 317, 60 x 73 cm., 23.62 x28.74 in., oil on canvas. . . . 277

25. La mere au canards efr Montfoucault, (The Duck Pond at Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 318, 46 x 55 cm, 18.11 x 21.65 in., oil on canvas...... 277

26. L'abreuvoir de Montfoucault, (The Drinking Pond at Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 320, 73 x 92 cm, 28.74 x 36.22 in., oil on canvas...... 278

27. Berger et laveuses ^ Montfoucault, (Shepherd and Washerwomen at Montfoucault). 1881. P&V 535, 65 x 81 cm, 25.59 x 31.89 in., oil on canvas...... 278

vii Figure Page

28. Laveuses au bord de l1Oise, (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise). 1878. P&V 456, 32 x 41 cm, 12.60 x 16.14 in., oil on canvas...... 279

29. Laveuses, (Washerwomen). ca. 1881. P&V 1556, 22 x 29 cm, 8.66 x 11.42 in., pastel...... 279

30. Laveuses au bord de l1Oise, Pontoise, (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise, Pontoise). ca. 1880-81. P&V 1617, 15 x 53 cm, 5.91 x 20.87 in., fan...... 280

31. Laveuses et paysan, (Washerwomen and Peasant). ca. 1881. P&V 1352, 39 x 49 cm, 15.35 x19.29 in., gouache...... 280

32. La cueillette des pommes (The Harvesting of Apples). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1665, 19 x 39 cm., 7.5 x 15.4 in., oil on faience...... 281

33. La recolte des pommes de terre (The Gathering of Potatoes). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1666, 19 x 18 cm., 7.5 x 7.1 in., oil on faience...... 281

34. Paysanne dans un champ de choux (Peasantwoman in a Cabbage Field). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1667, 19 x 18 cm., 7.5 x 7.1 in., oil onfaience ...... 282

35. La Saint Martin ^ Pontoise (Saint Martin's Day at Pontoise). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1668, 19 x 39 cm., 7.5 x 15.4 in., oil on faience...... 282

36. La cueillette des pommes (The Apple Harvest). 1886. P&V 695, 128 x 128 cm., 50.4 x 50.4 in., oil on canvas. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 64)...... 283

37. La cueillette des pommes (The Harvest of Apples). 1881. P&V 545, 65 x 54 cm., 25.6 x 21.3 in., oil on canvas...... 284

viii La cueillette des pommes (The Harvest of Apples). 1882. P&V 1363, 50 x 65 cm., 19.7 x 25.6 in., tempera...... 284

Hugo van der Goes, Fall of Man, circa 1468- 70. 13-1/4 x 9 in., Panel of divided diptych. (Cuttler, Northern Painting, fig. 183)...... 285

Limbourg Brothers. The Fall of Man, fol. 25V, The trks riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 25)...... 286

Les sarcleuses, Pontoise (Female Weeders, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 563, 63 x 77 cm., 24.8 x 30.3 in., oil on canvas...... 287

Lucas van Leyden, Venus and Cupid. 1528. 16.2 x 11.5 cm., 6.4 x 4.5 in., (Hollstein, X, p. 157)...... 288

Frans Menton, Danae Receiving the Golden Rain. 1570-1615. 21.3 x 26.7 cm., 8.4 x 10.5 in. (Hollstein, XIII, p. 35)...... 289

Jan Saenredam, Temptation of Man. 1597. 22.1 x 14.1 cm., 8.7 x 5.6 in. (Hollstein, XXIII, No. 8, p. 10)...... 289

H. Hondius I, Gustus. 1573-ca. 1649. 10.5 x 7.5 cm., 4.1 x 3.0 in. (Hollstein, IX, p. 86)...... 290

Jacob de Backer, Taste. Circa 1560-1590. 14.7 x 19.7 cm., 5.8 x 7.8 in. (Hollstein, I, p. 52)...... 290

Lucas van Leyden, The Fall of Man. 1530. 18.9 x 24.7 cm., 7.4 x 9.7 in. (Hollstein, X, p. 62)...... 291

ix Antonio Canova, Paolina Borqhese as Venus Victorius. 1804-1808. Length, 200 cm., 78.6 in., marble. (Licht, Canova, fig. 109)...... 292

Antonio Canova, Dirce. 1819-1822. 96 x 175 x 78 cm., 37.4 x 68.9 x 30.6 in., marble. (Licht, Canova fig. 220)...... 293

Jacques-Louis David, Madame Recamier. 1800. (Licht, Canova, fig. Ill)...... 294

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque. 1814. (Licht, Canova, fig. 112)...... 294

Eugene Delacroix, Femmes d 1Algers dans leur appartement (Women of Algiers in Their Apartment). 1834. 180 x 229 cm., 71 x 90-1/4 in., oil on canvas. (Poole, Delacroix, Plate 20)...... 295

Eugene Delacroix, Juive d 1Alger. 1838 (3rd state). 11.1 x 17.5 cm., 4.4 x 6.9 in., etching. (Delteil, III, No. 101)...... 296

Eugene Delacroix, Femmes d 1Alger. 1833 (1st state). 16.0 x 22.2 cm., 6.3 x 8.7 in., etching. (Delteil, III, no. 97). . . . 297

Le gouter, enfant et jeune paysanne au repos (The Snack, Child and Young Female Peasant Resting). 1882. P&V 553, 60 x 73 cm., 23.6 x 28.7 in., oil on canvas...... 298

Ramasseuse d 1herbe (Gathering of Herbs). 1882. P&V 1368, 36 x 17 cm., 14.2 x 6.7 in., gouache...... 298

Crispin Du Pas, Elle est tombe, j'ai vu son... (She Has Fallen, I Saw Her...), 18th C. Engraving (Flandrin, Les amours paysannes, fig. 26)...... 299

x Figure Page

58. La recolte des pommes de terre (The Harvest of Potatoes). 1872. P&V 166, 43 x 54 cm., 16.9 x 21.3 in., oil oncanvas ...... 300

59. La recolte des pommes de terre. 1874. P&V 295, 33 x 41 cm., 13.0 x 16.1 in., oil on canvas...... 300

60. La recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of Potatoes). 1880. P&V 1338, 27 x 49 cm., 10.6 x 19.3 in., gouache...... 301

61. La recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of Potatoes). 1882. P&V 1369, 30 x 22 cm., 11.8 x 8.7 in., gouache...... 301

62. Paysanne rattachant sa marmotte (Peasant Woman Reattaching Her Marmotte). 1882. P&V 1370, 56 x 36 cm., 22.1 x 14.2 in., gouache...... 302

63. Paysannes dans les champs, Pontoise (Peasant Women in the Fields, Pontoise). 1880. P&V 515, 46 x 65 cm., 18.11 x 25.59 in., oil on canvas...... 302

64. La recolte des pommes de terre a Pontoise (The Potato Harvest at Pontoise). 1882. 28 x 22 cm., 11 x 8-5/8 in., Etching and aquatint on copper, seventh state, on buff laid paper. (Boston, Pissarro, cat no. 178)...... 303

65. Paysanne attachant sa marmotte (Peasan Woman Attaching Her Marmotte). Circa 1886. P&V 1573, 27 x 21 cm., 10.6 x 8.3 in., pastel on etching...... 304

66. Paysanne en tablier bleu attachant sa marmotte, dans un champ (Peasant Woman in Blue Attaching Her Marmotte, in a Field). Circa 1882-83. P&V 1562, 55 x 44 cm., 21.7 x 17.3 in., pastel...... 305

xi Figure Page

67. Marche^ aux pommes de terre, boulevard des Fosses, Pontoise (Potato Market, Boulevard des Fosses, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 1365, 26 x 20 cm., 10.2 x 7.9 in., gouache...... 306

68. Paysanne et enfant dans les champs, Pontoise (Peasant Woman and Child in the Fields, Pontoise). 1881. P&V 552, 41 x 27 cm., 16.1 x 10.6 in., oil oncanvas ...... 307

69. Paysanne debout causant si un paysan agenouille (Peasant Woman above Talking to a Kneeling Peasant). Circa 1882. P&V 1371, 24 x 16 cm., 9.5 x 6.3 in., gouache...... 308

70. Champs de choux, Pontoise (Cabbage Fields, Pontoise). 1873. P&V 230, 60 x 81 cm., 23.6 x 31.9 in., oil on canvas...... 308

71. Le champ de choux (The Cabbage Field). Circa 1880. Delteil 29, softground etching. (Boston, Pissarro, 1981, fig. 7)...... 309

72. The Cabbage Field. Circa 1880. Pencil with softground on verso. (Boston, fig. 8 )...... 309

73. The Cabbage Field. Circa 1880. Pencil with softground on verso. (Boston, fig. 9)...... 309

74. Femme dans un potager (Woman in a Kitchen Garden). Circa 1880. Delteil 30, First state, 24.8 x 16.9 cm., 9.75 x 6.625 in., etching on zinc. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 171)...... 310

75. Femme dans un potager (Woman in a Kitchen Garden). Circa 1880. Delteil 30, Second state, 24.8 x 16.9 cm., 9.75 x 6.625 in., etching on zinc. (Leymarie and Melot, Graphic Works of the Impressionists, cat. no. P30 )...... 311

xii Figure Page

76. Femme dans un potager (Woman in a Kitchen Garden). Circa 1880. Delteil 30, Third state, 24.8 x 16.9 cm., 9.75 x 6.625 in., etching on zinc. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 172)...... 312

77. Paysanne cueillant des choux (Peasant Woman Harvesting Cabbages). N.D. 21.5 x 14.5 cm., 8.5 x 5.75 in., black crayon on blue paper. (Sotheby, Impressionist and Modern Painting, Part II, Thursday, July 4, 1974, cat. no. 341)...... 313

78. Cabbage Picker, N.D., Monotype. (Artist1s Proof, Vol. 8, 1968, p. 52)...... 314

79. Triage de chou (Preparation of Cabbage). 1883. P&V 617, 81 x 65 cm., 31.9 x 25.6 in., oil on canvas...... 315

80. Trieurs de choux (Preparers of Cabbage). Circa 1883. P&V 1381, 64 x 48 cm., 25.2 x 18.9 in., tempera...... 315

81. Trieurs de choux (Preparers of Cabbages). Circa 1883. 23.5 x 17 cm., 9.25 x 6.75 in., pencil, (Parke-Bernet, N.Y., Important Impressionist and 20th Century Drawings, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 970, Tp^ 12]. . . . 316

82. Paysanne assisse ^pluchant un chou (Seated Peasant Woman Plucking a Cabbage). Circa 1880. P&V 1546, pastel...... 317

83. La femme au chou (The Woman and Cabbage). Circa 1880. P&V 1547, 46 x 40 cm., 18.1 x 15.8 in., pastel...... 318

84. Paysanne triant des choux (Peasants Preparing Cabbage). Circa 1883. P&V 1382, 30 x 24 cm., 11.8 x 9.5 in., not specified...... 319

xiii Figure Page

85. Paysannes et paysan triant des choux (Peasant Women and Peasant Preparing Cabbage) Circa 1883. P&V 1383, 34 x 30 cm., 13.4 x 11.8 in., gouache, crayon and Chinese ink 320

86. La foire de la Saint-Martin, Pontoise (The Fair of Saint Martin's, Pontoise). 1872. P&V 178, 54 x 65 cm., 21.3 x 25.6 in., oil on canvas...... 321

87. Foire de la Saint Martin ^ Pontoise (Saint- Martin 's Day Fair at Pontoise). 1872. Delteil 131 (Leymarie and Melot, p. 135), 21.5 x 27.8 cm., 8.46 x 10.94 in., lithograph. (Leymarie and Melot, P 135). . . 322

88. Foire de la Saint Martin Pontoise (Saint- Martin 's Day Fair at Pontoise). 1879. Delteil 21, 11.9 x 16.0 cm., 4.69 x 6.3 in., etching. (Leymarie and Melot, P 21)...... 323

89. Foire de la Saint Martin, Pontoise (Fair of Saint-Martin1s, Pontoise). 1881. P&V 1618, 15 x 55 cm., 5.91 x 21.65 in., fan. . . 323

90. Marche aux chevaux, foire de la Saint- Martin, Pontoise (Horse Market, Fair of Saint-Martin, Pontoise). 1883. P&V 1372, 16 x 29 cm., 6.3 x 11.4 in., gouache...... 324

91. Portrait de Mme. J. Pissarro, esquisse (Portrait of Mme. J. Pissarro, Sketch). ca. 1874. P&V 290, 116 x 89 cm., 45.67 x 35.04 in., oil on canvas...... 325

92. Portrait de Mme. Pissarro cousant pr^s d'un e fen^tre (Portrait of Mme. Pissarro Knitting near a Window), ca. 1877. P&V 423, 55 x 46 cm., 21.65 x 18.11 in., oil on canvas...... 326

xiv Figure Page

93. Portrait de Mme. Pissarro (Portrait of Mme. Pissarro). 1883. P&V 1565, 61 x 47 cm., 24.02 x 18.50 in., pastel...... 327

94. Portrait de Cezanne (Portrait of Cezanne). 1874. P&V 293, 73 x 60 cm., 28.74 x 23.62 in., oil on canvas...... 328

95. Le pere Melon sciant du bois, Pontoise (Father Melon Sawing Wood, Pontoise). 1879. P&V 499, 89 x 117 cm., 35.04 x 46.06 in., oil on canvas...... 329

96. Le pere Melon fendant du bois (Father Melon Splitting Wood). 1880. P&V 1336, 32 x 21 cm., 12.60 x 8.27 in., gouache...... 329

97. Le petit de'jeuner, jeune paysanne prenant son caf^ au lait (Breakfast, Young Peasantwoman Taking Her Coffee). 1881. P&V 549, 65 x 54 cm., 25.59 x 21.26 in., oil on c a n v a s ...... 330

98. La march^ a* la volaille, Pontoise (The Poultry Market, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 576, 81 x 65 cm., 31.89 x 25.59 in., oil on canvas...... 331

99. La petite bonne de la campagne (Young Country Maid). 1882. P&V 575, 65 x 54 cm., 25.59 x 21.26 in., oil oncanvas. . . . 332

xv INTRODUCTION

Jacob-Abraham-Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) began a

new phase in representing ordinary human figures involved

in common, everyday activities in 1881.^ The first phase

occurred in the period prior to 1874, and had been developed within the general landscape tradition conveyed

to him by Fritz-Georg Melbye (1826-1896), and his work in

Venezuela. In the paintings from this phase, genre

figures and their activities were accompaniments to

landscape compositions. They were accessory figures that were part of the landscapes which Pissarro saw and painted. This use of genre figures was continued through

contact with contemporary French landscape tradition, and

his admiration for the paintings of Camille Corot (1796 —

1875) and the realist landscapes of Charles-Francois

Daubigny (1817-1878).

The second phase in Pissarro's use of genre figures began in 1874 when he decided to make genre itself a major focus of his paintings. Working at Montfoucault, he began to study rural life more intently. Scenes of peasant life, and its correspondence with the natural

1 2 environment, played a more prominent role. The humans and animals were compositionally more significant, and received greater attention by Pissarro in relation to the landscape itself. But it was not a simple question of one phase replacing another, for each of these two phases reflected a different attitude towards the relationship of figures and environment. Both modes continued to play a part in his oeuvre.

The third phase occurred in 1881, the year when

Pissarro worked with both Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) at Auvers-sur-Oise. Pissarro developed themes that he had first worked on in 1874 while at Montfoucault, and he created images that would be repeated and developed in various forms during the subsequent years leading to the eighth and last

Impressionist exhibition in 1886.

Camille Pissarro's representation of genre subjects in paintings, graphic works, and drawings is the subject of this research. Works created between 1871 and 1886, with a focus on the period from 1881 to the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, will be examined.

A review of the scholarship on Camille Pissarro and his art, and a brief assessment of this scholarship, will 3

be followed by a statement of the critical character of this study.

The Scholarly Writings

Current researchers have begun to look at the art and life of Camille Pissarro from new perspectives. New questions have been asked, and new directions for future study have been proposed. This has been made possible, in part, by the general availability of essential information— his correspondence, and the catalogs of paintings, drawings, and graphic production. Some of these source materials had been published previously; others are only newly available for study. Now, when scholars read what Pissarro himself had to say about art and look at the individual works, they are finding connections between his ideas and his art that had never been explored previously.

The art of Camille Pissarro was first mentioned in the publications of contemporary writers and critics.

They remarked upon specific works by the artist, at first in the official Salons, and later, in the Impressionist exhibitions. These writers attempted to understand and explain the new art, and to place it within the context 4 of the contemporary art environment. Some realized that the new artists had ideas and interests sympathetic to their own. Others used the newly developed tastes, and the inherent controversy they caused, to establish and maintain their own reputations. Comments by J.-A.

Castagnary in his Salons: 1857-1870 (1892),^ of Emile

Zola in Mes haines. Causeries litteraires et artistiques. Mon salon (1866)^ (1867), J.-K. Huysmans in

L'art moderne (1883),4 and Octave Mirbeau in Des artistes, premiere serie (1922)^ must be understood within the context of the author's literary biography. Castagnary's observations about Pissarro are informative, yet, within the total body of his criticism, their significance is minor. This critic's tastes are with the realist tendencies from which Pissarro and the other

Impressionists developed, and his much longer discussions of other painters and sculptors reveal a writer less comprehending of new directions in painting than is generally presented to be the case. Zola was a lifetime friend and supporter of Pissarro, yet his remarks are best understood within the context of Zola's own career rather than Pissarro's. An interesting study of the role that the literary press played in the art world is presented in Jacques Letheve's Impressionnistes et Symbolistes devant la presse (1959).® Just as the

Impressionist group formed an important basis for modern art, so did the contemporary literary environment and the role of the press form a basis for 20th century media practice. It is more helpful and accurate to view the literary and the art worlds as two separate but parallel and mutually enhancing, historical trends.

It is important to read Pissarro's correspondence with some of these authors in order to gain a sense of how he himself viewed their ideas. He carried on a friendly, but not uncritical, exchange with Huysmans and

Mirbeau. Pissarro's criticism of not only what they wrote, but how they developed their ideas, is a clue as to how one should evaluate their writings on art. They think in terms of literary ideas and subject matter and express their ideas on that basis. They do not understand that the visual artist goes through a different mental process when creating a work of art.

Pissarro advised Mirbeau to live with an artist and learn how the artist thinks before writing about that individual.^ He implies that the writers discuss subject matter and technique without understanding the "art" of the visual arts.® Theodore Duret was a longtime friend of Camille

Pissarro, and wrote Histoire des peintres impressionnistes? m which he discussed Impressionist art. The Impressionists, including Pissarro, are discussed as a group and as individuals only in brief essays. Duret helped define an understanding of

Impressionism and of Pissarro that has continued virtually unchallenged until recently. The author discussed the innovative nature of Impressionism, focusing on plein-air painting and the use of pure colors, with a consequent lack of premeditation, deliberate composition, and selective emphasis of details. He presents Impressionism as methodologically and conceptually opposed to traditional practice. The artist is an objective naturalist; there is no content other than what one sees. Gone are the days of Courbet's ideational reaction to what he already finds in nature.

Camille Pissarro was the subject of Duret's first essay on an individual Impressionist artist in the above cited book. In this matter he differs from other writers and historians of French Impressionism; for instance,

Camille Mauclair, in L 'impressionnisme, son histoire, son esthetique, ses ma^tres (1904),^® considers Pissarro a secondary artist and discusses him only briefly. Duret, 7 however, placed Pissarro first in order of presentation and gives him more space than other writers. In his essay, the author talks about Pissarro in a way which will form the accepted understanding of the artist:

In order to define him by his characteristic trait, one can say that he was the painter of rural nature and of rustic life. Not at all did he search for rare motifs in nature, nor did he believe that the painter should search for exceptional horizons. The sites which went directly to his heart, where he discovered charm, were those which one could call familiar.... He had pleased us with his honesty, having applied himself to rendering nature outside of conventional patterns.

Objective naturalism, thus, became the aesthetic basic for discussing Pissarro.

A different evaluation of Pissarro was presented on the other side of the Channel. George Moore, in his 1 9 Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters (1906), described Pissarro as less than an innovator, rather as a follower and imitator of the ideas of other artists, but one who never quite lost individuality. Wynford

Dewhurst, in his Impressionist Painting, Its Genesis and

Development (1904),^ held that it was the French artist's English experience which was the source of

Impressionism: "It cannot be too clearly understood that the Impressionist idea is of English birth."^ The flight imposed by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 8 provided French painters the opportunity to study the

English landscapists and to develop their ideas.^

Pissarro is described as a faithful copier of Jean-

Fran^ois Millet, as an idealist rather than a realist, and as an artist whose "sympathies were clearly with the

Fountainebleau school." Dewhurst cites as proof a letter which Pissarro wrote to him.-^ In this letter dated November, 1904, Pissarro also enumerates a list of

English painters that had interested him: Turner,

Constable, Old Crome, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Reynolds, as well as Watts and Rossetti. Dewhurst based his ideas on an interpretation- of what Pissarro wrote in this letter. Frequent mention of this letter is made in essays on Impressionism, but Dewhurst's ideas were not critically examined and explored until Christopher Lloyd reintroduced them in the 1970's.

The 1920's saw the first monographs on Camille

Pissarro. Adolphe Tabarant published his biography of the artist in 1924, gathering much of his information from conversations with the Pissarro family and from

Pissarro's correspondence with his friend Eugene

Murer,!® as well as from the fact that he himself knew

Pissarro. It is a thoughtful presentation based on facts and sources other than the author's recollections. In an 9

earlier essay written by Georges Lecomte, Camille

Pissarro (1922 ),^ little biographical data is presented.

The writer first met Pissarro through his son Lucien in

1890, in the later stages of the artist's career, and

indicates how a young man understands a much older and

already successful artist. And the excerpts from

Pissarro's letters to Octave Mirbeau are informative.

A third important volume from this period is Loys

Delteil's catalog of Pissarro's graphic production,

volume XVII in his series entitled Le peintre-graveur

illustr£ (XIXe et XXe si^cles). ^ This fully illustrated

collection allows one to view an entire body of work in a

convenient format. Comparisons can be made within

Pissarro's oeuvre as a graphic artist, as well as with

the graphic work of other artists of the period. This

catalog is an invaluable reference and source for the

study of Pissarro's artistic production.

Late in the decade of the 19 30's, several important

books were published. Lionello Venturi collected the p 1 Archives de 1'impressionnisme (1938). This is a source

book of the Impressionists' correspondence with Durand-

Ruel, including Pissarro, along with other information

from the archives of Durand-Ruel. Thus, basic 10 information fundamental to a study of Pissarro was- being made available in a highly accessible form.

The most important publication of the 1930's on

Pissarro is the two volume Camille Pissarro. Son art.

Son oeuvre. (1939),^ a catalog of his painted oeuvre.

Pissarro's son Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Venturi coauthored this major undertaking, with Venturi writing the introductory essay. The subjective emotional response by Venturi to the paintings themselves adds a new note to the analysis of Pissarro's art from the viewpoint of objective naturalism. Together with Loys

Delteil's catalog of the artist's graphic work, these two publications formed a basis for the study of Pissarro's art. As reference and as source book, they are invaluable. The scholar can review and study the artist's work conveniently. Now, ideas could be generated that would have been virtually impossible prior to the publication of these catalogs. This compendium of images provides advantages to the student that even contemporaries of Pissarro could not have had.

It was not until after World War II that the next important studies were published. The interruption, however, provided a period of time for an accumulation and consolidation of information. With Pissarro's son 11

Lucien, John Rewald edited Camille Pissarro's correspond­ ence, which was published in English translation as well.^ Gathered together in one volume, these letters reveal an artist of great perception and depth of insight. The reader discovers what Pissarro himself thought about his own art, and that of other artists and cultures. It is a rich source of information and ideas, and second in importance only to the catalogs of paintings and graphics as a source of information about the artist. This collection continued the publication of

Pissarro's correspondence that had begun with excerpts of the Mirbeau letters in Lecomte's 1922 biography. Charles

Kunstler published the letters to Mirbeau in their unedited form at a later date (1930).^

An interesting study of one of Pissarro's interests was presented by Benedict Nicolson in "The anarchism of

Camille Pissarro" (1947).^** The author looks at events and ideas concerning this aspect of Pissarro's life and discusses the extent of the artist's participation in anarchist thought and activity. This intellectual and social concern of Pissarro is compared with his choice of subject matter. Theodore Duret's view of Pissarro as the painter of rustic life is presented as reinforcing the anarchist-socialist ideas of the artist, while Nicolson 12 proceeds to integrate Pissarro's other subjects into this ideational sphere. Yet it seems that the relationship of these political and philosophical ideas with Pissarro's art is as much the result of circumstance as it is of cause and effect. Nicolson defines the limits of the study of Pissarro's ideas:

In Camille Pissarro the currents of Corot and Courbet unite to produce a version of the proletarian world, saved from sanctimoniousness by truth and from triviality by style. But though his views on society may assist us to define the character of his work, they provide no clue to its quality.... Nor does sociology help us to answer the questions why, during Pissarro's period of greatest revolutionary activity, he should have lost the inspiration and rituality of his earliest years.

The first edition of John1Rewald's The History of

O *7 Impressionism was published in 1946. Rewald brought together names, dates, places, events, etc., and organized this tremendous amount of material into a coherent historical narrative. His work is the important chronicle of the Impressionist movement. Individual biographies are integrated into chronologically comparable units so that one gets a sense of what happened, when it happened, and who was involved.

Subsequent editions were revised to include new information about individual artists, among them, 13

Pissarro. This history was followed by the author's Post- 9 ft Impressionism, from van Gogh to Gauguin in 1956. °

Several specialized studies provide insights into

Pissarro's art. Richard Brown's "Impressionist 9 Q technique: Pissarro's optical mixture" (1950), ^ and two articles by Oscar Reutersward, "The 'Violetomania' of the

Impressionists" (1950),^ and "The accentuated brushstroke of the Impressionists" (1952),^ examine the technical aspects of Pissarro's art and the Impressionist style in general. Not only does one better understand how the artists achieved their effects, but it is also better understood how these artists broke with contemporary norms of painting. The public reacted strongly to the technical means of execution as well as to other aspects of their paintings. How the

Impressionists actually extended traditions rather than broke with them becomes more clear. o 2 Douglas Cooper's "The painters of Auvers-sur-Oise" is an informative study of a specific geographic area and the artists who worked there. It was an area where a number of important 19th century artists worked, a nexus of activity providing the opportunity to see how different artists in the same area were attracted to different motifs, or represented the same subject in 14 different ways. Corot, Daubigny, and Theodore Rousseau

(1812-1867) had worked there; Pissarro frequently painted in the area; and his friends Dr. Paul Gachet (1828-1909) and Eugene Murer (1845-1906) had residences there. In

1881, Pissarro, Cezanne, and Gauguin worked there together. It was a location for personal contact and mutual interaction.

Theodore Reff's "Copyists in the Louvre" (1 9 6 4 )-^ suggests that the plein-air objective-naturalist character of Impressionism may be only part of the issue.

Although Pissarro's name is recorded only once, and that in 1860, the idea that he studied the accepted masters is reflected in his letters, especially in the much later letter to Wynford Dewhurst. This premise has not been developed until this time. A second study by Reff,

"Pissarro's portrait of Cezanne" (1967),^ broadens the question of iconography in his work. Pissarro's use of symbolic images follows traditional practice in portraiture, which is different from that of genre and landscape, and belies the understanding of Impressionist practice articulated by Duret.

Rewald published a biographical sketch on Camille

Pissarro in 1 9 6 3 ^ in which he presents a brief 15 discussion of Pissarro's drawings. The book has excellent large color illustrations of paintings as well.

In a study of Pissarro's art by Jerrold Lanes,3® based upon an exhibition at the Wildenstein galleries in

1965, the author severely judges Pissarro as an artist.

His art is "an unresolved and secondary production."37

Pissarro's "eclecticism requires powers of synthesis of a high order if it is to be successful, and these Pissarro lacked."3® For Lanes, real quality in his work ended when he became an Impressionist; "then, in the early eighties, a problem of subject-matter is added to a problem of style, for while previously the heightened color and tumultuous touch failed merely to adhere to the forms, now they fail also to accord with the content, which is pure Millet."3^ Pissarro was drawn to the

"sentimentalism of Millet, the kind of idealized genre, and this was further emphasized in Pissarro by a certain sweetness and preciousness he got from Renoir."^0 These and similar thoughts expressed by Lanes echo ideas of

Moore and Dewhurst, but they go further to challenge much of what has been written about Pissarro. Lanes is a facile thinker and writer whose ideas, however, are provocative and therefore must be considered. 16

Interest in the art of Camille Pissarro increased as the sesquicentennial anniversary of his birth (1830) approached in 1980, serving as the impetus for a number of exhibitions and studies. These studies gave rise to new insights into Pissarro's art. Leymarie and Melot published The Graphic Works of the Impressionists in

1972,^ an illustrated catalog of works in the various graphic media preceded by a short essay. The reproductions of Pissarro are complete, although not all states of each work are reproduced. Care has been taken to reconcile each item with the earlier catalog of Loys

Delteil. By concentrating their efforts on the

Impressionists, the authors have made it convenient to review this body of work by Pissarro within the context of similar efforts by the other Impressionists.

Barbara Stern Shapiro arranged an important exhibition, Camille Pissarro, the Impressionist

Printmaker, ^ at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in 1973.

The author makes a valuable study of the technical processes and innovations developed by Pissarro in his graphic production.

A series of small exhibitions, each focusing on different aspects of Pissarro's life and art, were held at the MusCe de Pontoise, Pontoise: Camille Pissarro, 17 sa famille, ses amis, ^ December 10, 1976, to February

28, 1977; and a second exhibition, beginning in 1978, and entitled Camille Pissarro, Charles-Francois Daubigny,

Ludovic Piette. ^ A small exhibit in 1980 focused on the subject of Pissarro et Pontoise, ^ illustrating the range of motives that Pissarro drew upon from that period in his life. Then, Anne Thorold compiled an exhibit for the

Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in 1980 entitled Artists,

Writers, Politics; Camille Pissarro and His Friends. ^

She developed a picture of the intellectual environment surrounding the artist.

Christopher Lloyd has written several stimulating essays introducing new perspectives from which to examine

Pissarro's art. In "Camille Pissarro and Hans Holbein the Younger" (1975),^ he investigates the relationship of Pissarro to the art of the past. Lloyd reminds us that Pissarro's correspondence contains many references to other artists and the art of other cultures. The author suggests that Pissarro may have been directly influenced by these artists. Among others, Pissarro had mentioned Gainsborough in his letter to Dewhurst, cited in that author's Impressionist Painting, and Lloyd suggests thematic and compositional sources from

Gainsborough for paintings that Pissarro executed at 18

Montfoucault. Hans Holbein the Younger, whom Pissarro

called "the real master", created woodcuts for The Dance of Death which may have been the source for one of

Pissarro's lithographs illustrating Kropotkin's text.

Lloyd suggests that:

reassessment of Pissarro's oeuvre involving a detailed study of his working methods, the iconography of the motifs he used, the detection of his visual sources, as well as a re­ examination of the chronology of his paintings, drawings and gravure work, would undoubtedly enhance his reputation.

In the subsequent "Camille Pissarro: Towards a

Reassessment" (1982),^ Lloyd opens up some of these avenues. The premise is that Pissarro's work requires fresh study, his position in relation to his contemporaries, and to tradition having been underestimated. Further, his importance as a figure painter has not been understood in the context of his oeuvre. The literature on Pissarro has transmitted misconceptions about his art without reexamining the sources:

the significance of the letters as documentary evidence...has yet to be appreciated to what extent they constitute a written disquisition on French art of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Lloyd is the author of the Skira monograph, Camille

Pissarro,^ published in 1981. Written in the form of a 19 biographical essay, this book is well illustrated with good color illustrations of significant works not available elsewhere. The author injects the narrative with ideas and associations first suggested in the earlier articles.

Richard Brettell, with Lloyd, co-authored the cata­ log of Pissarro's drawings in the Ashmolean Museum in

1980.^ This important collection provides access to this little-studied area of Pissarro's artistic produc­ tion. The information is invaluable for understanding his art. Covering a wide period of activity, they reveal the transitions from Pissarro's original conceptions, and drawings from life, to the finished work. The authors have grouped these drawings into hypothetical sketch­ books, then arranged these sketchbooks into chronological order. Brettel had first developed his understanding of

Pissarro's art in his study of the Pontoise paintings for his doctoral dissertation of 1977.^

The catalog is set out in three parts. All of the drawings are reproduced, the quality of the reproductions is good, and the individual catalog entries contain important discussions of the drawings. In the introductory essay, the authors discuss the drawings as a group and in reference to Pissarro's paintings and 20 graphic production. The evidence of the drawings is used to support the idea that Pissarro, as well as other

Impressionists, may not have placed as much importance on spontaneity and plein-air painting as is traditionally held to be the case. To understand Pissarro's art in this way alters traditional assumptions about the nature of Impressionism, opening new avenues for research and exploration.

In his review of this catalog published in the

British Journal of Aesthetics (1981),^ David Thistlewood admires the objective resolution of a difficult problem while modestly criticizing the "creative leaps of thought"^ that offer "glimpses of unelaborated themes".^ "However, it does not, in the slightest way, detract from an impeccable, scholarly text that one or two of the authors' prejudices appear disguised as near- certainities."'^ Barbara Stern Shapiro, in her review in

Master Drawings (1982),^® uses the opportunity to write an essay on the subject of Pissarro's drawings, in which she perceives a close relationship between some of

Pissarro's work and that of Rembrandt.

Two new biographies of Pissarro were published at this time. Kathleen Adler published Camille Pissarro: a Biography59 in 1978. It is a running narrative of the 21 artist's life and career. Pissarro: His Life and Work^^ was written in 1980 by Ralph Shikes and Paula Harper.

This presentation of Pissarro's life incorporates new research on Pissarro and his contemporaries. The authors contributed their studies of Pissarro's correspondence, which includes previously unpublished material from letters that the artist's correspondents wrote to him.

The book is organized into chapter-essays on various aspects of Pissarro's life and which are arranged in general chronological order. The authors introduce much new information about Pissarro.

Brettell reviewed the Shikes and Harper biography in the Art Journal (1981 ).^ An inconsistency in the organization of chapters interrupts the chronological flow, and the dates of letters and documents are not specified in the text. The reviewer states that the authors do not handle the subject critically or psychologically, never directly confronting the contradictions of Pissarro's character. For Brettell, the book is more valuable for its details than its conclusions, and for its presentation of evidence than the interpretation of that evidence.

Janine Bailly-Herzberg has begun to publish the complete correspondence of Camille Pissarro. Earlier 22 publication of these letters was scattered among many periodicals and books, frequently in an edited form. The first volume, and the only one published at this time, covers the period from 1865 to 1885, presenting all known correspondence arranged in chronological order. The letters themselves are reproduced in their complete, unedited form. Those lacking an exact date are assigned one based on facts contained in the letters, and on what is known about Pissarro's relationship with the correspondent. The editor has extensively annotated these letters with biographical information and quotations from letters written to Pissarro that greatly increase the value of the volume. This valuable source of information about what Pissarro thought and did is of an importance equaled only by the catalogs of his work in various media.

The exhibition catalog, Pissarro: Camille Pissarro

1830-1903 (1 9 8 0 ),^ summarized the currents of Pissarro research in a series of general essays, and entries on exhibited works. The forward by John Rewald®^ summarizes the central attitudes that have guided the study of

Pissarro and the Impressionists, and lays the groundwork for the essays that follow. With the same degree that the Impressionists had to battle academics to attain 23 recognition, Rewald speaks against these academic artists and those who would study them. To his mind, they are not worthy of study because of a lack of intrinsic artis­ tic value and because they represent the forces against which the Impressionists had to struggle to achieve success. This forceful denunciation of academic art has the effect of reestablishing the traditional explanation of Pissarro's art as essentially objective and naturalis­ tic. These are the qualities lacking in the academic painters. To establish the historical significance of the Impressionists required concentration on what dif­ ferentiated them from their artistic opponents. This focusing, however, had important consequences. Qualities shared by the traditional artists and the Impressionists would never be considered. That would have been viewed as an intellectual compromise, lowering the value of the

Impressionists, and enhancing that of the academics.

The second essay, entitled "Camille Pissarro: a

Revision," was written by Richard Brettell.^ Pissarro is seen as an innovator in several respects. Iconogra- phically, he was the most prolific portrayer of the industrial aspect of modern landscape in his representa­ tion of factories. Important differences between

Pissarro's representation of peasants and that of Millet 24 are pointed out. Pissarro is the painter of the peasant in the marketplace where rural and agricultural life­ styles interface with bourgeois life in the contemporary urban environment.

A second point in the Brettell essay is based on

Pissarro's method of working. The artist's drawings are the primary souce of these new ideas that alter the perception of Pissarro's art. Working directly from nature was only one of Pissarro's methods and these images perhaps represented only a small part of his oeuvre. Nature was a source of ideas and images, but the finished works would be executed in the artist's studio.

The creative process involved a series of studies and compositional essays. Some other contributors to the catalog were Janice Bailly-Herzberg,^® Christopher

Lloyd,67 and Barbara Stern Shapiro.

An Assessment

Camille Pissarro's correspondence reveals a perceptive and articulate mind which is richer and more intellectually complex than generally represented.

Biographical research had focused primarily on a study of

Pissarro's character and personality, while accumulating 25 biographical facts. But, one can use his letters as a stimulus to a study of his ideas and interests, especially his great respect for other artists and the art of other times and cultures.

The direct references he made to other artists have not been studied as a means of understanding his own art better, although this has been proposed. Primarily, direct or paraphrased quotations are only used to establish or illustrate biographical facts. Little attempt has been made to discover the exact nature of his interest in other art, or what importance this knowledge might have for a deeper appreciation of his art. The objective and naturalist interpretation of Pissarro's art prevented this direction of study.

As well, recent research efforts, most especially in the study and publication of Pissarro's drawings, have demonstrated a working methodology that belies the generally accepted understandings of his art, and that of the Impressionists in general. But, as yet, there has been only a surface examination of images and contexts, such as those at Pontoise. Pissarro's genre paintings of the 1880's have not received critical attention, as Lloyd has pointed out, beyond general cataloging and chronological arrangement. 26

The Critical Premises of This Study

It has become clear that Pissarro's definition of

Impressionism is different from the generally accepted one. His interest in other artists is not coincidental.

Pissarro was knowledgeably aware of artistic tradition, with which his ideas and method are sympathetic. The influence was one of the ways of perceiving and conceiving, not merely one of borrowed motifs and styles.

The illustrated catalogs of Pissarro's paintings, drawings, and graphic production provide an opportunity to study the whole body of his art. The chronological development of the artist's perceptions and conceptions can be observed. Pissarro's images can be divided into categories of motifs. Within each group, while there is some degree of variation, there is a repeating preoccupation with them over the years. So, too, an individual motif can belong to more than one group. It is by this means that linkages are evidenced through such shared motifs, similar figures and poses, and common relationships and interactions. Further, motifs and motif groups may be found in more than one medium, demonstrating a thematic continuity not evident in a single medium. Several times Pissarro created a group of images

that were apparently intended to form a single decorative

scheme. One of the purposes of this study will be to

discover the relationships among these several images and

to examine the reasons for these intended juxtapositions.

Their group associations, Pissarro's ideas about art, and

the methodological implications of the creative process

will help to explain their thematic content, individually and within the context of the grouping.

Pissarro's correspondence will be studied in order to discover his ideas about art and to examine his

references to other artists. The implications of his

working methods will be coordinated with the ideas developed from his correspondence. Since these ideas and methodologies are not part of the generally accepted definitions of Impressionism, their implication for

Pissarro's art will entail going beyond the comprehension of Pissarro as simply an objective naturalist.

Pissarro's interests have a broad intellectual basis that extends beyond the group of the Impressionists and the regular cafe meetings. His association with the

literary and dramatic circles of Paris was enhanced by

the family of his mother's first husband, Isaac Petit,

several of whom were writers and actors. Pissarro 28 seemingly employed pictorial devices similar to literary descriptive devices to give a meaning to his work that underlies his apparently objective presentation of images.

Apparently, Camille Pissarro also developed a narrative structure within the body of the oeuvre.

Meanings are related to the realistic nature of the images and to what the figures do in the scene repre­ sented. Pissarro combined meanings developed from a realistic context to form narrative relationships in the juxtaposed images of iconographic schemes. He draws from his personal environment, family relationships, and life experiences, intermixing quantities of folklore with ideas from his Jewish background to create an icono­ graphic entity having several valid access points.

This is one quality of Pissarro's art that influenced other artists, especially the young that followed. The complexity of his art formed a source from which many could draw refreshment— Paul Gauguin, Francis

Picabia, Henri Matisse, especially.

Camille Pissarro apparently combined the objective observation of nature with personal experience and insight to create an individual yet comprehensible imagery. Thus, complete understanding of his work 29 requires an awareness of the eclectic and inventive intellect and imagination revealed in his letters, and an awareness of the individual circumstances of the artist and his life. This is especially true for traditional themes that are given a contemporary form based upon

Pissarro's response to and vision of reality.

Finding his ideas existing within nature, Pissarro was following the method validated by Courbet, as the latter described his inspiration and experience of painting The Stonebreakers (1849) in a letter to Francis

Wey:

As I had taken a carriage and was driving on the way to the Chateau at St-Denis to paint a landscape; near Maisieres, I stopped to consider two men breaking stones on the highway. It's rare to meet the most complete expression of poverty, so an idea for a picture came to me on the spot. I made an appointment with them at my studio for the next day, and since then I've been working on the picture.

it's necessary to encanailler art. For long the painters, my comtemporaries. have produced art from an idea and cartoons. 9

Thus Pissarro developed ideas that Courbet had worked with earlier. How he did this will be explored in the following pages. 30

Notes to Introduction

1 See Meyer Shapiro, "Nature of Abstract Art," in Marxist Quarterly, I, No. 1 (Jan.-March, 1937), pp. 79- 86, for a study of the general crisis among the Impressionist painters in the 1880's. In this essay, the author introduces the question of subject matter in Impressionist painting, and its relationship to the Impressionist style.

^ jules-Antoine Castagnary, Salons: 1857-1870, 2 V (Paris: Biblioth^que-Charpentier, 1892). This is a collection of individual articles originally published in various periodicals. Specific references to Pissarro are found in "Salon des refuses, XIV," "Salon de 1866," "Salon de 1868," and "Salon de 1870." o s ' J Emile Zola, Mes haines. Causeries litteraire et artistique. Mon salon (1866), (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1867). This collection of essays has been published in a number of editions, and has been reprinted by Slatkine Reprints, Geneva, 1979.

^ Joris Karl Huysmans, L'art moderne, (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1883).

Octave Mirbeau, Des artistes, premiere serie 1885- 1896, (Paris: E. Flammarion, [1922] ) .

® Jacques Leth^ve, Impressionnistes et Symbolistes devant la presse, (Paris: A. Colin, 1959).

^ Camille Pissarro to Durand-Ruel, Paris, [end of December, 1884], Correspondance de Camille Pissarro. Tome I: 1865-1885, ed. Janine Bailly-Herzberg (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), no. 261. 31

8 This question of studying Impressionist painting in terms of the subject matter is developed in the scholarship of T. J. Clark, who builds upon the ideas initially presented by Shapiro in 1937. Clark's work, presented in The Painting of Modern Life; Paris in the Art of Monet and His Followers, centers on urban, bourgeois subjects, as Shapiro did, and the painting of "modernist" subjects. Yet Pissarro concentrated on rural and agricultural subjects in contradistinction to the interests of Clark and Shapiro, and does not fit the Impressionist pattern as it pertains to subject matter, and on which these scholars base their ideas.

9 Theodore Duret, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cgzanne, 4th ed. (Paris: Librairie Floury, 1939). An English translation entitled Monet and the French Impressionists: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, C^zanneT Guillaumin, translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch, was published in 1910 by Grant Richards, London.

1® Camille Mauclair, "Les artistes secondaires de l'impressionnisme," in L'impressionnisme, son histoire, son esthetique, ses ma'frtres, (Paris: Librairie de l'art ancien et moderne, 1904).

H Duret, pp. 41-42. Pour le definer par son trait caracteristique, on peut dire qu'il a £te le peintre de la nature agreste et de la vie rustique. II n'a aucunement recherch^ dans la nature les motifs rares, il n'a point cru que le peintre dut se mettre en qu£te d'horizons exceptionnel. ^Les sites qui lui sont all^s directement au coeur, ou il a decouvert du charme, ont 'Gt'e ceux qu'on pourrait appel^s familier .... On lui a su gr£" de cette probit'e, qui s'appliquait a* rendre la nature en dehors des donnees conventionnelles.

1^ George Moore, Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters, (Dublin: Maunsel ed., 1906).

H Wynford Dewhurst, Impressionist Painting, Its Genesis and Development, (London: George Newnes Limited, 1904 ) .

1^ Ibid, p. 4. 32

Ibid, p. 31.

15 ibid, p. 50.

1^ Ibid, pp. 31-32. I p Adolphe Tabarant, Pissarro, translated by J. Lewis May, (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925). The earlier French edition was published in 1924 by F. Rieder & Cie, Paris.

1® George Lecomte, Camille Pissarro, (Paris: Les Editions Bernheim-Jeune, 1922). o n Loys Delteil, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir, Volume 17 in Le peintre-qraveur illustre (XIXe et XXe siecles), (Paris: Loys Delteil, 1923).

21 Lionello Venturi, Archives de l'impressionnisme. Lettres de Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley et autres. Memoires de Paul Durand-Ruel. Documents, 2 Vols., (Paris: Durand-Ruel, 1938).

22 Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro. Son art. Son oeuvre, 2 Vols., (Paris: Paul Rosenberg, 1939).

22 Camille Pissarro, Camille Pissarro. Letters to His Son Lucien, Edited with the Assistance of Lucien Pissarro by John Rewald, (New York: Pantheon, 1943). A more complete edition is Lettres a son fils Lucien, presentees, avec 1 'assistance de Lucien Pissarro, par John Rewald, (Paris: A. Michel, 1950). A third edition, revised and enlarged, Letters to His Son Lucien, was published in 1981 by Peregrine Smith, Inc., Santa Barabara, Ca.

24 Charles Kunstler, "Des lettres inedites de Camille Pissarro et Octave Mirbeau (1891-1892) et et Lucien Pissarro (1898-1899), Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, Vol. 57 (1930), pp. 173-190 and 223-236.

25 Benedict Nicholson, "The Anarchism of Camille Pissarro," The Arts, no. 2 (1947), pp. 43-51.

25 ibid, p. 51. 33

37 John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946).

2® John Rewald, Post-Impressionism, from van Gogh to Gauguin, (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956).

29 Richard F. Brown, "Impressionist Technique: Pissarro's Optical Mixture," Magazine of Art, Vol. 43, part 1 (1950), pp. 7-15. This article is based on the author's unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The Color Technique of Camille Pissarro, (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1952).

38 Oscar Reutersward, "The 'Violetomania' of the Impressionists," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 9, no. 2 (Dec., 1950), pp. 106-110.

21 Oscar Reutersward, "The Accentuated Brush Stroke of the Impressionists," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Vol. 10, no. 3 (March, 1952), pp. 273-278.

22 Douglas Cooper, "The Painters of Auvers-sur- Oise," Burlington Magazine, 97 (April, 1955), pp. 100- 105.

22 Theodore Reff, "Copyists in the Louvre," Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, no. 4 (Dec., 1964 ), p. 552.

24 Theodore Reff, "Pissarro's Portrait of Cezanne," Burlington Magazine, 109 (Nov., 1967), pp. 626-633.

22 John Rewald, Camille Pissarro, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963).

2® Jerrold Lanes, "Loan Exhibition at Wildenstein," Burlington Magazine, 107 (May, 1965), pp. 274-276.

37 Ibid, p. 274.

38 Ibid, p. 275.

39 Ibid, p. 276.

40 Ibid. 34

Jean Leymarie and Michel Melot, The Graphic Works of the Impressionist: Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Sisley, Transl. by Jane Brenton (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1972).

42 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Camille Pissarro: the Impressionist Printmaker, by Barbara Stein Shapiro, 1973. Pontoise, Musee de Pontoise, Camille Pissarro, sa famille, ses amis, 10 December 1976 - 28 February 1977.

44 Pontoise, Musee de Pontoise, Camille Pissarro, Charles-Francois Daubigny, Ludovic Piette, 18 November 1978 - 8 Fetfruary 1979.

Pontoise, Musee de Pontoise, Pissarro et Pontoise, 1980. A C Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Artists, Writers, Politics: Camille Pissarro and His Friends, 1980.

4^ Christopher Lloyd, "Camille Pissarro and Hans Holbein the Younger," Burlington Magazine, 117, no. 872 (Nov., 1975), pp. 722-726.

48 Ibid, p. 722. 4 Q Christopher Lloyd, "Camille Pissarro: Towards a Reassessment," Art International, 25, nos. 1-2, (1982), pp. 59-66.

50 Ibid, p. 59.

Christopher Lloyd, Camille Pissarro, (Geneva: Skira, 1981).

52 Richard Brettell and Christopher Lloyd, A Catalogue of the Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980).

88 Richard Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in a Landscape, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1977, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1978). 35

54 David Thistlewood, Review of Brettell and Lloyd's A Catalogue of Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, (1980), in British Journal of Aesthetics, 21, no. 4 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 378-380.

55 Ibid, p. 380.

56 Ibid, p. 379.

5^ Ibid, p. 380.

58 Barbara Stern Shapiro, Review of Brettell and Lloyd's A Catalogue of Drawings by Camille Pissarro..., in Master Drawings, 20, no. 4 (1982), pp. 393-398.

Kathleen Adler, Camille Pissarro; A Biography, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978).

60 Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, (New York: Horizon Press, 1980).

61 Richard Brettell, Review of Shikes and Harper's Pissarro, in Art Journal, 41, no. 3 (1981), pp. 271-275.

62 Camille Pissarro, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro. Tome 1: 1865-1885, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980).

65 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Pissarro: Camille Pissarro 1830-1903, (1980).

6^ John Rewald, "Foreward," ibid, pp. 9-12.

65 Richard Brettell, "Camille Pissarro: A Revision," ibid, pp. 13-37.

66 Janine Bailly Herzberg, "Chronology," ibid, pp. 59-65.

6^ Christopher Lloyd, with Anne Distel, "Catalogue of Paintings," ibid, pp. 67-156, and Christopher Lloyd, "Catalogue of Drawings," ibid, pp. 157-190.

68 Barbara Stein Shapiro, "Pissarro as Print-Maker," ibid, pp. 191-234. 36

69 Cited in Jack Lindsay, Gustave Courbet. His Life and Art (Somerset, England: Adams & Dart, 1973), p. 59. A similar idea is expressed in a letter from Courbet to Champfleury, written in Ornans in the spring of 1850, cited in Appendix 2 of T. J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic 1848-1851, (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1973), pp. 165-167. CHAPTER I

THE AROSA FOUR SEASONS SERIES (1872)

In the 1870's, after his return from England,

Pissarro developed ideas in his paintings which he would synthesize in the genre subjects of the 1880's. He used his art to express ideas that go beyond objective naturalism, giving an increasingly important role to the human figure in his compositions. These ideas are expressed both in landscape subjects and in portraiture, as well as the genre subjects. Pissarro assimilates the new style of Impressionism to traditional concepts.

Of the works Camille Pissarro painted in 1872, four represent the seasons of the year: Le printemps (Spring fig. I);1 L' (Summer; fig. 2);2 L 'automne (Autumn; fig. 3);^ and L 'hiver (Winter; fig. 4).^ This iconographic set was done as dessus de porte decorations for his patron Achille Arosa's home. (It is through

Achille Arosa's brother, Gustave, that Pissarro apparently met the former's godson, Paul Gauguin, in

1877. Pissarro then introduced Gauguin to Cezanne, although he himself had begun working with Cezanne at 38

Pontoise in 1872.) These paintings are a surviving example from Pissarro's early oeuvre of a group of paintings deliberately conceived and executed as a set.

Mutual agreement between artist and patron determined the subject matter, while physical dimensions were determined by the intended locations. It is their large size, however, that places them among a small group of the artist's oeuvre.

The subject of the seasons strikes a sympathetic chord with Pissarro as a naturalistic painter. Many of his works focused on nature with its many manifestations of light and color; and landscape was a central subject in Pissarro's art. But in this set of paintings, the general theme of nature is placed within the grand context of the annual cycle of the seasons and the harmony of Man's activities with this natural cycle as he labors to produce his food. This agricultural cycle is the narrative of Man's interaction with natural forces and events, of his relationship with nature. It is a relationship of the greatest significance for the survival of the human species: Le printemps (Spring; fig. 1) with bloom and planting; L'efe (Summer; fig. 2), abundance and harvesting beginning; L 'automne (Autumn; fig. 3), harvesting completed and late planting; and 39

L 1hiver (Winter; fig. 4) with dormant villages and secure shelter.

As with any artist so inclined, Pissarro was faced with the problem of what scenes and activities to represent in each of the four seasons. So, too, representations of seasonal activities and agricultural cycles belong to a tradition that reaches back into antiquity,^ for they portray one of mankind's most common and basic relationships with nature. Medieval artists inherited this ancient legacy.** The idea of natural order coordinating and coordinated with human agricultural activity was adapted by French Gothic artists to the territory that was to become modern

France— the realm of their activity and intimate knowledge. Thus, seasonal cycles became a common, repeating subject.

The seasons of the year and the labors of the months symbolize the divine order of the natural universe in the decorative scheme of the portal of the Virgin from the west facade of N&tre-Dame, Paris (fig. 5).® The seasons are represented on the trumeau sides by the figure of a man who removes his clothes and grows younger as the weather grows warmer from winter to summer. 40

The labors of the months, on the sides of the jambs, are paired with their respective signs of the zodiac, on the fronts of the jambs as they rise like the sun from

January to June and descend from July to December. In

February, sheltered by a house from the cold outside, a man warms himself in front of a fire. A peasant goes to the vineyard to prepare the vines for the new year's crop of grapes in March, while the sign of Aries is surrounded by the first flowers of spring. In July, a peasant sharpens his scythe in preparation for harvesting the wheat, while in August, the ripe grain is cut with a sickle. A peasant sows the new crop of wheat during the month of October.

These images glorify manual labor and express the idea of :

work accepted and conceived not as servitude but as enfranchisement. Manual labor ... delivers man from the necessities to which since the Fall his body is subject ....

Drawing inspiration from their immediate reality:

scarcely a trace of literary influence is shown here, but we find instead definite artistic traditions which had come down through the centuries constantly renewed by contact with reality. In the hands of these craftsmen ancient formulas never become stereotyped.10

The sculptor combines the observation of nature and contemporary life to create a vital naturalism. 41

The Limbourg Brothers extended this tradition in their illustrations of the labors of the months in Les tres riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416. The snow-covered landscape and farmyard combined with an interior scene of peasants warming themselves at the fireplace represents February (fig. 6).^ For March

(fig. 7),^ they paint a portrait of a specific site, the

Chateau de Lusignan, with peasants in the foreground plowing, seeding, and trimming the vines for the new agricultural year. Peasants cut the new wheat crop near the Chateau de Clain in July (fig. 8 ) , ^ and continue the harvest into August (fig. 9 ) ^ at the duke's chateau at

Etempes. In October (fig. 10),^ the fields are plowed and sown for the coming year's crop of grain. The

Limbourg Brothers developed the traditional representations of the labors of the months by portraying typical weather patterns and extensive landscapes of specific sites, as well as the characteristic activities.

They have created portraits of the months.

The images selected by Nicolas Poussin for his paintings of The Four Seasons illustrate a different conception (figs. 11-14). Poussin chose scenes from the annual cycle of agricultural activities to represent each of the seasons, which were associated with stories from 42 the Old Testament. Historical narrative was aligned with the natural cycle to create an harmonic relationship.

Spring (fig. 11)^® is represented by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the fateful event of the Fall; the study of Ruth and Boaz and the harvesting of wheat symbolize Summer (fig. 12).-^ The return of the spies from the promised Land, from Exodus, and the appropriate seasonal activity of the grape harvest and the picking of 1 ft ripe fruit were selected for Autumn (fig. 13). For the representation of Winter (fig. 14)^ Poussin chose the

Deluge, the great rains and floods that destroyed all life except for Noah and the inhabitants of the ark.

Each season has a characteristic weather pattern which Poussin has paired with a Biblical story. The respective stories take place within a natural climatic environment that corresponds with the season with which it is associated. This natural alliance of seasonal weather conditions and agricultural activities reverses the chronology of the historical narratives from the Old

Testament chosen to illustrate the seasons. Natural harmony and the cyclical nature of the seasons takes precedence over historical chronology, an inverted relationship which emphasizes the annual renewal which takes place in the spring. The events of history are 43 rearranged to symbolize empirical reality and to emphasize the unity of nature.

From this brief overview, it is apparent that

Camille Pissarro developed his representations of the four seasons in the tradition of the manuscript illuminations. The four scenes represent characteristic seasonal activity, events involved with the production of food and the ritual of planting and harvesting, and on portray specific places. u And like the Limbourg

Brothers, the landscapes represent the area around

Pontoise.

The Le printemps (Spring; fig. 1) landscape is filled with a flowering apple tree, new green grasses, fresh blue sky, as a man and a woman walk across the cool, damp earth of the plowed field, planting seed for the new year's food. L ' ^ t e (Summer; fig. 2) is represented by the broad expanse of wheat fields in the midst of being harvested to produce the grain and flour that will make the staff of life, bread. The heavy bearded heads of grain contrast with the standing straw, while in the foreground sheaves of harvested wheat lie like a multitude of small corpses on the ground.

Harvested fields peopled with haystacks like prehistoric menhirs rising above the horizon illustrate the L 1automne 44

(Autumn; fig. 3) season. A laborer tills the soil in preparation for the sowing of the new crop of winter wheat, while a lone carriage rolls along a rutted road through the fields. L'hiver (Winter; fig. 4) is represented by a snow-covered village, like the illustrations of the month of February at Notre-Dame and by the Limbourg Brothers, a time of relative inactivity when the earth lies dormant. The trees, too, are dormant and fruitless, their branches covered with snow. Smoke curls upwards from the chimneys while people huddle inside to stay warm and dry, consuming the stores of food raised during the preceeding months. The peaceful, rich abundance of the warmer seasons has died to provide security, comfort, and sustenance for the people in the village, demonstrating again the goodness of divinely ordained and ordered nature.

Jean-Francois Millet had begun a series of the four seasons for his patron Frederic Hartmann in 1868 and continued to work on the paintings through 1875. He was able to complete only two of the paintings before his death in 1875, the pictures representing Spring

(fig. 15) and Autumn (fig. 17). Spring is the purest landscape of the four, with little indication of human presence, depicting blossoming apple trees like 45

Pissarro's Spring, newly grafted trees, and the traditional symbol of promise, the rainbow, in an atmosphere of dramatic light effects. Summer (fig. 16)^ is represented by the harvest of buckwheat, which is the same idea as Pissarro's use of the wheat harvest. But

Millet emphasizes the human activity as peasant women gather up the bundles of harvested wheat to carry to the circle of men in the background threshing the grain.

Three great haystacks represent the Autumn season as sheep graze on the short grasses of the cut field, representing the total use of the earth's resources. In

Winter (fig. 18 ),^4 anonymous women trudge along a path beaten through the snow with great bundles of firewood on their backs, an image found also in the Limbourg

Brothers' illustration of February. Millet's images, like Pissarro's, have been developed from the same tradition. Yet they are different. Millet's emphasis on the figures and volumes in the paintings and on what they are doing describes the virtuous peasant through whose labor and shrewd, economical, and thorough use of nature's resources the divine plan is realized. Millet presents the virtues of economic endeavor. 46

The understanding of the four seasons as allegory found in Pissarro's paintings is similar to ideas expressed by his artistic mentor, Camille Corot:

Twas Spring complete, in its awakening, its perfume, its colour, its sound.... 'Twas Autumn complete, with its breath of decay, its death rattle, its farewell...

And Corot further compared women and his art:

In them [women] I saw the beauty of life. That beauty is in every living creature, in everything that breathes, just as it is in everything which is impregnated with life. It has given me as much pleasure to paint these women as to paint my landscapes. On their flesh the poem of the hours has unfolded itself as beautiful, as enchanting, as on the soil, the waters, the hills, the trees. The mystery of the woods was in their hair; the mystery of the sky and of the still pools in their eyes. So too, Spring and Autumn passed before me when they smiled, joyously or sadly.25

In 1874 Pissarro created works which indicated new directions. He developed an interest in new subject matter. Paintings began to reveal his creative process more clearly, or perhaps a new way of working. Pissarro left Pontoise in October, traveling with his family to

Montfoucault for a visit with his friend Ludovic Piette.

But this was more than a cordial visit, as he stated in a letter to Theodore Duret dated October 20, 1874: "I am going there to study the figures and the animals of the true country."2^ This brief statement of intentions was 47

significant in two ways, as discussed in the following

paragraphs.

The first instance is his reference to "the figures

and animals," indicating a new interest in the painting

of genre subjects. He had made sketches and drawings of

figures in various poses and activities, and had

included figures of humans and animals in finished

paintings; but their function was as accessories,

compositional notes to enliven a scene through the

reference to human activity. This new interest in genre

had been suggested in the paintings of the four seasons, where the interest had been in correlating human agricultural activity with the appropriate season. The

figures themselves and the evidence of human activity begin to play a primary role in these allegorical

landscapes presented in a rustic and realistic context.

Pissarro had misgivings about this new direction in his work, which he expressed in another letter to Duret, dated December 11, 1874, and written at Montfoucault:

I have not worked badly here, I have begun on figures and animals. I have many projects of genre paintings, I undertake timidly this branch of art, so illustrated by artists of the first order, it is quite audacious, I_am quite afraid of making a complete failure. ' 48

Why was Pissarro lacking confidence about this new direction in which he was developing his art?

This attitude may derive from the increased emphasis on the figure. No longer would it be merely an accessory element in the composition; the figure would become the major focus of the composition and the content. Pissarro had painted figures before in the portraits of individ­ uals, but genre was different. Genre subjects frequently contained allusions and reminiscences or illustrated proverbs and maxims.

Another reason for his concern was explained in a letter that Duret wrote to Pissarro, dated December 14,

1874;

The pure landscape has been invaded from so many sides that there is a place to take and hold in the line of Paul Potter, Cuyp, Troyon, Millet, well understood in being modern. As for the public and the tide of amateurs, dilettantes, critics, it is always the same love of mediocrity, of the banal, of artifice. It is necessary to accomodate human imbecility and to content oneself with the approbation and the clientele of a small restrained nucleus.

In the letter to Duret dated October 20, cited earlier, Pissarro spoke of "the figures and the animals of the true country." Apparently, he felt it necessary to go to Montfoucault in the Mayenne region of France.

This was a relatively undeveloped area, untouched by 49 modern social and technological development, especially when compared to the ^le-de-France. Pontoise was only an hour's ride by train from Paris in 1862. In the Mayenne,

Pissarro would find a life-style following a pattern which had all but disappeared from areas closer to the urban centers. There he would find the practices and beliefs not yet overwhelmed by modern social and economic change which in the imaginative remembrances of those who had moved to the modern cities had been overlaid with the veneer of nostalgic reflection. Pissarro wanted realistic models for his paintings of genre subjects.

The new understandings emerging in the treatment of landscapes and his involvement with genre subjects also found expression in portraiture. Pissarro's Portrait de

Cezanne (Portrait of Cezanne; fig. 19)^ of 1874 demonstrates a conceptual approach to painting. The burly figure of this painter-friend of Pissarro seen from a three-quarters view is surrounded by images attached to the background wall of the painting.^® These images are taken from contemporary sources and complement the physical and psychological description of the sitter.

The viewer is given information about Cezanne, about how

Pissarro feels about his friend, that is not available from the portrait of the figure alone. We are informed 50 about the physical character, the personality, and the interests of the sitter.

The immediate predecessor of this painting is s' Manet's portrait of Emile Zola. Both are continuations of portrait tradition in which the objects in the painted portrait are extensions of the individual who is being portrayed. In the paintings of Manet and Pissarro as well as those of others, the objects and images are symbols of general attributes, emblems of personality characteristics and specific deeds from the individual's biography. The image which Pissarro has represented in his portrait of Cezanne are reproductions from contempor­ ary sources that represent the personal character of _ Cezanne.

Pissarro stated that, in art, ideas and subjects remain unchanged. It is the ways in which they are represented that are new and different. Pissarro's painting of Cezanne is a contemporary portrait, painted in a contemporary style, and employing contemporary images to complement the physical portrait. It is a portrait that is more than the physical portrayal of the individual or the subjective understanding of the person by the artist. It is the symbolic extension of the individual into his environment through the 51 representation of external objects that illustrate the nature of that extension and interaction.

The evidence of Pissarro's art points to a methodology different from the generally accepted and limited definition of Impressionism. Pissarro did paint directly from nature throughout his career as an artist.

He sketched and drew from nature. But these works were not always considered to be finished works in their own right. They often served as studies for larger and more developed paintings. In some of his drawings from nature, Pissarro indicates only the general shape and character of the scene. Brief color notations in areas of the drawing have been added by the artist to serve as reminders when he later uses the drawings to create finished paintings (fig. 20). 32 This deliberate and thoughtful method of working translates initial drawings and studies into finished paintings.

This method of working is illustrated by a small group of paintings that Pissarro executed during the fall and winter seasons of 1874-1875 while at Montfoucault.

Painted as pendants in 1875, L'hiver ^ Montfoucault

(Effet de neige), (Winter at Montfoucault. Snow effect; fig. 21)33 and L'automne (Etang de Montfoucault)

(Autumn. Pool of Montfoucault; fig. 22)3^ are the same 52 size. The compositions are similar, with the pond as the central motif, and the tall forked tree towards the left providing a vertical accent. Each composition has a different viewpoint and a variation of figures and animals, with carefully described differences due to the relevant seasons. The contrast of the seasons reflected in the pond at Montfoucault is the common theme.

Each of these large paintings (114 cm x 110 cm,

44.88 x 43.31 in.) had been preceded by smaller works that seem to have been executed as preparatory studies.

L*etang de Montfoucault. Effet d'hiver (Pool at

Montfoucault. Effect of Winter; fig. 23)^ was the study for L'hiver ^ Montfoucault (Effet de neige) (fig. 21).

The horizontal orientation of the earlier study was changed to a vertical one, the viewpoint for the later composition is from further back, and has been moved to the right. More significant than these general compositional observations is the application of pigment.

In the earlier and smaller study the technique is sketchy, and the paint is applied in small strokes or drawn in broad lines to describe elements such as the branches of trees. In the later and larger painting the technique is more "finished," less coarse and sketchy.

The general effect of a winter scene has been changed 53 into a depiction of a snowscape. The overall difference is that between a sketch or study and a finished painting, with the study being executed in quick color notations out of doors while the later painting was apparently done, or finished, indoors.

L'etang de Montfoucault (Pool of Montfoucault;

■ } C ^ fig. 24), ° a study for L'automne (Etang de

Montfoucault) (fig. 22), is the same size as the other study, 60 cm x 73 cm, 23.62 x 28.74 in, but presents a different viewpoint of the motif of the pond. The viewer stands on the shore of the pond which occupies the center of the composition, surrounded by trees and other foliage, with the tall forked tree at the far left of the composition. Ducks swim in the water of the pond. This painting shares its composition with the 1875 La mare au canards ei Montfoucault (The Duck Pond at Montfoucault; fig. 25).37

Pissarro developed the composition of L'abreuvoir de

Montfoucault (The Drinking Pond of Montfoucault; fig.

26)38 from the L'etang de Montfoucault (fig. 24) study, and it is from this painting that Pissarro created his

L'automne (Etang de Montfoucault) (fig. 22), having added the figure of the cowherd and her cows on the banks of the pond. The horizontal composition of the smaller work 54 has been translated into a vertical format which the

L'automne (Etang de Montfoucault) (fig. 22) shares with its pendant. Pissarro has shifted the viewpoint to the left, compressing the figures of the cows and the cowherd into the narrower foreground space. The composition is denser and more compact, concentrating more on the fore- and middle-grounds. The combination of the altered viewpoint and the surrounding foliage limits visual wandering to a small area of background sky.

This group of paintings illustrates an approach to creating a work of art that coexists with the naturalistic immediacy of the traditional understanding of Impressionism. Pissarro worked in a deliberate manner, progressing from study to finished painting.

These two paintings representing the seasons of fall and winter continue the idea of the 1872 paintings representing the four seasons. The subject is nature with a human presence, the change of seasons from autumn to winter, and how this is manifested by weather and the individual elements of the landscape.

Another series of paintings further illustrates this method of working to create a composition, and the primary role that figures come to play in the composition. Landscape frequently becomes a stage for 55 genre activity. In this instance the process takes place over a period of years, from 1876 to 1881, and involves the conflation of two themes of subject matter. Pissarro painted Berger et laveuses ^ Montfoucault (Shepherd and

O Q Washerwoman at Montfoucault; fig. 27) in 1881. Two women kneel on the banks of the river doing laundry. A shepherd stands on the right, his small flock of sheep behind him, as the woman nearest him turns her head to look at him as if taken by surprise. The time is the end of the day, at sundown. In developing this composition,

Pissarro drew upon an earlier work that is dated to 1876,

Le berger £ Montfoucault. Soleil couchant (The Shepherd at Montfoucault. Sunset).4^ This painting is not illustrated in the catalogue; the authors refer the reader to the aforementioned Berger et laveuses ^

Montfoucault (fig. 27):

There exists another paintingof the same subject "Laveuses et berger," dated 1881, Number 535.

From this earlier work the artist took the shepherd and the sunset image; the washerwomen were derived from another series of paintings.

The painting Laveuses au bord de l'Oise (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise; fig. 28)42 was executed in 1878.

The subject is two women kneeling on the banks of the 56 river doing laundry. To their right on the edge of the bank a large tree leans out over the water while the two women interrupt their work momentarily, turning their heads towards each other to converse. The small pastel of Laveuses (Washerwomen; fig. 29)^ would seem to be a study for this painting, for its quick color notation and general composition are similar, but it has been assigned a date of circa 1881 in the catalogue, probably on the basis of its compositional similarity with the 1881

Berger et laveuses £i Montfoucault (fig. 27). It may be a study for the fan dated circa 1880-1881, Laveuses au bord de l'Oise, Pontoise (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise,

Pontoise; fig. 30).^

The two different themes were merged in the Laveuses et paysan (Washerwomen and Peasant; fig. 31),^ a gouache given a date of circa 1881. This painting is a compositional study for the 1881 Berger et laveuses a

Montfoucault (fig. 27). The shepherd image from 1876 has been combined with the washerwomen from 1878. The pose of the second figure has been rearranged to interact with the figure of the shepherd. The other woman already had her head turned in that direction. Once Pissarro was satisfied with the conflated composition, he executed the finished painting. 57

This small group of paintings raises important questions about Pissarro's art. The step by step process of arriving at a finished painting runs counter to

Impressionist aesthetic theory. The fact that this process occurred over a period of years indicates a development of ideas over time. The scenes that Pissarro chose to represent are realistic shepherds and washerwomen, and they are painted in a naturalistic style. But they were conceived independently. The original painting of the shepherd was developed from scenes at Montfoucault in the Mayenne, home of Pissarro's friend, Ludovic Piette. The laundresses were seen near

Pontoise on the banks of the Oise, near Pissarro's home.

Pissarro combined compositions from two distinct and different geographic areas to create a single composition in what could be called a conceptual naturalism.

Additionally, the laundresses were painted in full daylight in the morning while the original shepherd painting occurred at sunset, soleil couchant. Pissarro has combined images originally seen and conceived at different times of the day in different lights into a unified environment. Why did Pissarro create these paintings? Why did he employ a conceptual methodology to combine images from disparate sources? This is not 58 merely the work of Pissarro the Impressionist, but also of Pissarro the artist and thinker, the perceptive and articulate person who expresses himself so well in his letters. This conceptual approach developed over a period of time and allowed the injection of conscious thought and deliberation into the creative process. The artist works with an idea that guides his decisions, frequently one that tells a story or depicts an event from a narrative from literature or history.

What story could Pissarro be portraying in his painting? In La vie rustique en France, Andre Theuriet describes the washing of laundry as a ceremonial and sacramental act that occurs once or twice a year.^ The ritual of washing takes place over a period of three days, like the burial and resurrection of Christ. In

French tradition, berger refers not only to a shepherd, but also to the Good Shepherd or Christ, and to a sorcerer or worker of magic. ^ In order to answer the question we must look at his other work and examine his correspondence. Perhaps it will reveal a pattern of thinking that will allow us to understand his working methods. Pissarro had given a contemporary and naturalistic form to the traditional idea of the four seasons which he had executed in 1872 for his patron 59

Achille Arosa. He had painted the portrait of Cezanne and had employed contemporary symbols to develop the portrait. Pissarro had begun to paint rural genre subjects in 1874. These works were intended to be sold to an urban clientele for whom these subjects represented a vanished or vanishing way of life, perhaps one that they themselves had never actually experienced. For these unknown patrons, the subjects represented not reality but rather reminiscences infused with nostalgia, agrarian idylls to soothe the tensions brought about by contemporary urban life. Pissarro developed traditional ideas; he developed images deliberately; and, he conceived images in symbolic, allegorical form. For this, he employed a naturalistic language, not only in the way in which he represented his subjects, the

Impressionistic and realistic styles, but in the manner in which he chose the subjects themselves. The individual images are wholly within his experience. He saw them himself. 60

Notes to Chapter I

^ Le printemps (Spring). 1872. P&V 183, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas. (Source for illustration other than Pissarro and Venturi catalogue will be noted in parentheses.)

Color reproductions for the four seasons can be found in Burlington Magazine, 113 (Nov., 1971), pp. v m - i x , and in Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture, Wednesday, December 1, 1971, Cat. no. 8, i-iv.

The first time a work is referred to in the text, the French title will be followed by the English translation, and will be noted for a more complete description. In the note entry, the French title as per the Pissarro and Venturi catalog will be followed by the English translation in parentheses, then the date. This will be followed by the Pissarro and Venturi catalog number, hereafter abbreviated to P&V, the size in centimeters, with height preceding width, the size in inches, and the medium. The source of the illustration will be indicated when different from the Pissarro and Venturi catalog illustration.

2 L'^te (Summer). 1872. P&V 184, 55 x 120 cm, 21.65 x 47.24 in., oil on canvas.

Sotheby, Catalogue, Dec. 1, 1971, lists the measurements of L'et^ as 55 x 130 cm., the same dimensions as the other three paintings.

^ L 1automne (Autumn). 1872. P&V 185, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas.

^ L 'hiver (Winter). 1872. P&V 186, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas.

^ James Carson Webster, The Labors of the Months, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983), p. 5ff. 61

® Ibid, "The Twelfth Century," p. 56 and. "In France," pp. 66-79.

*7 / ' Emile McMe, "Book II. The Mirror of Instruction. Part I. Labour and learning; their part in the work of redemption. Manual work. Representations of the labours of the months; illustrated calendars," in The Gothic Image; Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, translated by Dora Nussey (1930; rpt New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958), pp. 64-75.

® Portal of the Virgin, Northern portal on west facade, Notre-Dame, Paris, 12th century. (Bottineau, N&tre-Dame de Paris and the Sainte-Chapelle, figs. 61-62).

^ Male, p. 64.

Ibid., p. 69.

^ The Limbourg Brothers, February, fol. 2v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 3).

The Limbourg Brothers, March, fol. 3v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 4).

^ The Limbourg Brothers, July, fol. 7v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 8).

^ The Limbourg Brothers, August, fol. 8v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 9).

^ The Limbourg Brothers, October, fol. lOv, The tres riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 11).

^ Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Spring. (The Earthly Paradise). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 242).

^ Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Summer. (Ruth and Boaz). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 243). 62

Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons: Autumn. (The Spies with the Grapes of the Promised Land). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, M ellon Lectures, no. 244).

^ Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons: Winter. (The Flood). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 245). p o u Another discussion of Pissarro's four seasons group of paintings is found in Richard Robson Brettel, Pissarro and Pontoise, Yale University, Ph.D. disserta­ tion, 1977 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1978), pp. 213-217.

21 Jean-Francois Millet, Spring. 1868-73. 86 x 111 cm, 33.86 x 43.70 in., oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, M illet, no. 68).

22 Jean—Francois Millet, Autumn. 1868-74. 85 x 110 cm, 33.46 x 43. S'rtn., oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, M illet, no. 70).

2^ Jean-Francois Millet, Summer, the Buckwheat Harvest, 1 8 6 8 -T?f 85 x 111 cm, 33.46 x 43.70 in., unfinished oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 69).

2^ Jean-Fr^n£ois Millet, Winter. 1868-74. 78.7 x 97.8 cm, 30.98 x 38.50 in., unfinished oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, M illet, no. 71).

2^ Cited in Gustave Geffroy, "Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot," in Corot and Millet, edited by Charles Holme and translated by Edgar Preston, Special Winter 1902-3 Number, The Studio (London: Offices of the Studio, 1902 ), p. i .

2^ Camille Pissarro (to Theodore Duret), Pontoise, 20 October 1874, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro I. 1865-1885., ed. Janine-Bailly-Herzberg (Paris: Presses Universitaries de France, 1980), no. 37. "J'y vais pour etudier les figures et les animaux de la vraie campagne." 63

27 Pissarro (to Theodore Duret), Montfoucault, 11 December 1874, Correspondance no. 38. "J'ai travaille" pas mal ici, je me suis mis aux figures et animaux. J'ai plusieurs pro.jets de tableaux de genre, je me lance timidement dans cette branche de l'art, si illustree par des artistes de premier ordre, c'est bien audacieux, je crains bien de faire un four complet."

O Q ^ Theodore Duret to Camille Pissarro, 14 December 1874, Correspondance, p. 96, note 3. "Le paysage pur est envahi de tant de c©tes qu'il y a une place a* prendre et a' tenir dans la ligne des Paul Potter, Cuyp, Troyon, Millet, bien entendu en “et a n t moderne et autre. Quant au public et e? la mar£e des amateurs, dilettantes, critiques, c'est toujours le m&ne amour de la m£diocrit£\ du banal,, de la ficelle. II faut s'arranger de 1'imb£cillit£ humaine et se contenter de 1 'approbation et de la clientele d'un petit noyau restreint."

29 Portrait de Cezanne (Portrait of Cezanne). 1874. P&V 293, 73 x 60 cm, 28.74 x 23.62 in.,- oil on canvas.

The iconography and sources of Pissarro's Portrait de Cezanne were studied by Theodore Reff in "Pissarro's Portrait of Cezanne," Burlington Magazine, CIX (Nov., 1967), pp. 626-633.

31 Camille Pissarro (to Lucien Pissarro), Osny par Pontoise, 17 February 1884, Correspondance no. 219. "Mon cher Lucien, ne te tracasse pas trop chercher du nouveau, le nouveau ne se trouve pas dans le sujet, mais bien dans la fa^on de 1'exprimer."

32 "Le soir soleil couchant," Sketchbook III, 68B, in Brettell and Lloyd, Catalogue of Drawings by Camille Pissarro, pencil on paper.

33 L'hiver a Montfoucault (Effet de neige), (Winter at Montfoucault. Snow effect). 1875. P&V 328, 114 x 110 cm, 44.88 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas.

34 L'automne (Etang de Montfoucault), (Autumn. Pool of Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 329, 114 x 110 cm., 44.88 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas. 64

L'etang de Montfoucault. Effet d'hiver, (Pool of Montfoucault. Effect of Winter). 1874. P&V 275, 60 x 73 cm, 23.62 x 28.74 in., oil on canvas.

36 L'etang de Montfoucault, (Pool of Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 317, 60 x 73 cm., 23.62 x 28.74 in., oil on canvas. O7 \ La mare au canards a Montfoucault, (The Duck Pond at Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 318, 46 x 55 cm, 18.11 x 21.65 in., oil on canvas. Op L'abreuvoir de Montfoucault, (The Drinking Pond at Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 320, 73 x 92 cm, 28.74 x 36.22 in., oil on canvas.

Color reproduction in Lloyd, Camille Pissarro (1981), p. 75. on v v Berger et laveuses a Montfoucault, (Shepherd and Washerwomen at Montfoucault). 1881. P&V 535, 65 x 81 cm, 25.59 x 31.89 in., oil on canvas.

40 Le berger a Montfoucault. Soleil couchant, (The Shepherd at Montfoucault. Sunset). 1876. P&V 366, 60 x 73 cm, 23.62 x 28.74 in., oil on canvas.

4^ Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro. Son art. Son oeuvre., 2 vols. (Paris, Paul Rosenberg, 1939,) I, no. 366, comment.

^3 Laveuses au bord de l'Oise, (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise). 1878. P&V 456, 32 x 41 cm, 12.60 x 16.14 in., oil on canvas.

43 Laveuses, (Washerwomen)♦ ca . 1881. P&V 1556, 22 x 29 cm, 8.66 x 11.42 in., pastel.

44 Laveuses au bord de l1Oise, Pontoise, (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise, Pontoise). ca. 1880-81. P&V 1617, 15 x 53 cm, 5.91 x 20.87 in., fan.

45 Laveuses et paysan, (Washerwomen and Peasant). ca. 1881. P&V 1352, 39 x 49 cm, 15.35 x 19.29 in., gouache. 65

46 Andre Theuriet, "La lessive," La vie rustique en France, (Paris, Launette et Cie, 1888), pp. 141-146.

47 Emile Littr'e, Dictionnaire de la lanque francaise, s.v. berger. CHAPTER II

THREE APPLE HARVEST COMPOSITIONS (1881, 1882, 1881-1886)

Genre figures and their activities became a major subject of Pissarro's paintings in the early 1880's.

Where the first phase was represented by landscapes with figures, the second one by genre subjects in a landscape environment and the third by attention to their activities, thus this new, fourth, genre conception made figures the focus. These figures often dominate the picture space by their size and number. Not infrequently, it is the activity of a figure and interaction of figures, an apparent narrative action, that draws one's attention to them rather than the surrounding landscape. Thus, Pissarro has endowed his figures with an importance that he had earlier reserved for portraits — his figures have become more than anonymous types engaged in random activity. People are shown involved in significant activity. Landscape and townspaces serve as a locale justification, becoming the background arena for activity. This fourth phase extends from about 1881 through to some of the paintings

66 67

exhibited in the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition

in 1886. In addition, the works of this phase appear to

engage an important allegorical and symbolic character,

one which will be studied in the following pages.

The most important work for understanding this actually incorporates four separate scenes. It is a

jardiniere decorated with four ceramic panels. Scholars have dated the plaques ca. 1884 to ca. 1885. This is noted in the catalogue raisonrie of Pissarro's paintings by Ludovic Pissarro and Lionello Venturi (P&V 1665, 1666,

1667, 1668). Thus, in date, they represent a developed form of this phase which began in 1881.

The great importance of these paintings stems from the fact that they were intended to be grouped— like the previous Seasons (1872). There, he had coordinated landscape and human activity in a natural narrative of the seasons. In this study of the jardiniere, not only will the relationships among the scenes be explored, but also how each of the jardiniere plaques relates to representations of similar subjects in Pissarro's oeuvre.

This latter will not only demonstrate the place the scenes have within the general context of the artist's work, but aid in our understanding of the jardiniere scenes, singularly and collectively. 68

The second reason for the importance of these paintings is that the jardiniere was intended as a personal family possession. The four scenes were never exhibited during the lifetimes of Camille Pissarro or of his wife Julie Vellay Pissarro. The jardiniere compositions remained in her possession until her death in 1926. This suggests that Pissarro most likely selected, composed and juxtaposed the individual subjects for personal reasons, a rationale derived from the situation of and the relationships relevant to the

Pissarros. The possibilities of this will also be explored, but in a subsequent chapter, IV.

The four scenes designed for the jardiniere are: La cueillette des pommes (The Harvesting of Apples; fig.32);^ La recolte des pommes de terre (The Gathering of Potatoes; fig. 33):^ Paysanne dans un champ de choux

(Peasantwomen in a Cabbage Field; fig. 34) and,

La Saint-Martin a Pontoise (Saint-Martin1s Day at

Pontoise; fig. 35).^ Upon the disposition of the

Pissarro estate at the time of Madame Pissarro's death, this set of works was dispersed. La cueillette des pommes remained in the family's possession; the other three plaques passed as a group into a private 69 collection. Of these four scenes the apple harvest,

La cueillette des pommes, will be discussed first.

This representation is similar to a group of paintings of the same subject that the artist executed between 1881 and 1886. Each of the thematically constituant works generally has the same composition, thus forming a sequence that was developed thoughtfully over a period of time; seemingly, each subsequent treatment was developed from one that preceeded it. The final composition of this series of apple harvests is the splendid oil painting La cueillette des pommes

(The Apple Harvest; fig. 36)^ of 1886, exhibited for the first time in the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition of that same year. It is this painting that is rightfully the summation of the six years of work on this subject that began in 1881. So too, the specific study for this work will demonstrate the creative working method employed by

Pissarro, revealing a complexity and a richness that is typical of the artist and his treatment of a motif.

The importance of this work for Pissarro is indicated by him in a letter to his son Lucien; dated

July 22, 1883; he wrote:

...as for my large canvases, I have two of them which you know, that I have thought over 70

for two years, my Apple Eaters, I have worked on a great deal, I want to finish it for April.

At this time, Pissarro had already been working on the painting for two years, intending to finish in time for the exhibition in April, 1885. It was, however, not shown until 1886, after six years of work.

It is a very large painting by Pissarro's standards, measuring 128 cm by 128 cm (50.4 x 50.4 in.). To work on a single work in oil on such a large scale was relatively expensive, especially as Pissarro was never unconcerned about money. In addition, its large size would have taken up valuable space in the studio, for as he continued to work on it, it had to be accessible. Why, then, was this painting so important to him? So important that he invested so much time, material, and effort in its creation? Certainly, this method of developing a composition was the antithesis of the

Impressionist direct-confrontation of nature. Therefore, what might Pissarro's ideas about Impressionist methodology have been, and about art in general? His work on this painting can offer the answers to these questions. Moreover, the answers gained are clearly substantiated by Pissarro's correspondence. First, let 71 us explore his statements concerning his approach, then, return to an examination of the painting itself.

Camille Pissarro understood Impressionism as demonstrating an objectivity towards nature, expressing his ideas in a letter written to Lucien on February 28,

1883, he wrote:

...really, Impressionism should be only a theory purely of observation.

This idea is clarified in his remarks about an exhibition of Japanese art that he saw in Paris in 1893:

I saw Monet at the Japanese exhibition. Damn it all if this show doesn't justify us! There are grey sunsets that are the most striking instances of impressionism.

Admirable, the Japanese exhibition. Hiroshige is a marvelous impressionist. Monet, Rodin and I are enthusiastic about the show. I am pleased with my effects of snows and fields; these Japanese artists confirm my belief in our vision.

For Pissarro, Impressionism was neither a style nor a technique. It was an art based on observation, which was developed from natural and real qualities that the artist had observed and experienced.

Pissarro frequently advised Lucien "....not [to] neglect nature,"^® emphasizing this phrase by underlining the words in the letter. In the same vein he continued:

Do not forget the studies after nature, line drawings with suggestions from the Egyptians, 72

and from gothic figures, the true ones, as we have seen at Rouen; it is necessary to train yourself in drawing, for the moment do not search for the thing itself, later when you will know more, if you have what is necessary, you will find your style...remember that the Primitives are our masters, because they are naive and learned. •*-

Pissarro advised his son to draw from nature and to study

the art of the past which itself was based on the observation of nature. Pissarro's understanding of

Impressionism included both the drawings done from nature and the art of the Egyptians and the Primitives.

Personal style was to be developed through the synthesis of art and nature.

In another letter, Pissarro advised Lucien to follow his inclinations, to study and make copies of finished works:

If you can go make some studies, I advise you to do so, but let nothing stop you from realizing these marvelous bas-reliefs of the Parthenon or other works chosen to.suit your taste, because even there there are aspects to choose. But do not forget that one must be oneself! But one does not achieve that without effort. 2

One must maintain personal integrity, and that requires a great effort.

Pissarro gave specific and detailed advice on how

Lucien should proceed to develop his talents, advice that

Pissarro had derived from a conversation with Degas. 73

I have spoken to Degas of the project that you had of taking the drawing classes of Legros. Degas told me that there was a way to avoid the influence of the artist, the method is very simple, here it is: it is to reproduce at your home, from memory, the work that one has done in class. I suppose that you begin the general drawing, from the return to the house, you prepare your sketch and try to reconstruct from memory that which you have made after nature; the next day, in class, you finish some part of your drawing; from memory you continue that which you made at home; little by little, you finish at the same time your study, then you make the comparison; you will have some difficulty but a time will arrive when you will be surprised at the facility with which you will retain images, and, curious things, the observations that you will make from memory will have a power quite more grand, quite more original, than those made directly from nature; the result of this drawing will be artistic, it will be a drawing that is yours. It is a good way to avoid servile imitation. 3

The development of the mental faculties is important to understanding Pissarro's ideas about art. One should draw from nature and copy those artists, from any period or culture whatever, whose art was based on observation of nature. By drawing from the model in the studio, then from memory at home, the artist will learn to retain what he has seen. The drawings from memory will be stronger and more original than those made directly from nature.

By avoiding the servile imitation of nature, the drawing will become art and will have the artist's personal stamp. The artist learns from nature and art to train 74 his eyes, hands and mind; but it is through the mediation of mind and of memory, that the artist creates art.

Technique was not an essential component of quality in art, as Pissarro wrote in a letter to Durand-Ruel in

November, 1886:

As to the execution we regard that as insignificant, compared with other matters it is of little importance, art having little to do with it. According to us; originality consists only in the character of the design and in the individual vision of the artist.

Quality and value derived from intangible elements, mastery of technique is assumed.

In 1883, Camille Pissarro stated that

...really, Impressionism should be only a theory purely of observation; without losing either imagination, or liberty, or grandeur, in the end all that makes an art that is great, but not some superficiality that makes sensible people swoon. '

Imagination, freedom and a sense of greatness infuse a work of art. The pure observation of nature without these qualities is not great art, for the art of a great artist is such that "...without caption, without explanation, their designs remain beautiful.

Pissarro states that it is through the thoughts and feelings of the artist that art is created:

Calm, reflection, and at the same time passion for one's subject is necessary to make something of beauty. Thinking and emotional commitment are necessary to create art. When Pissarro compares the art of Flandrin with that of Ingres, he talks about the nature of art:

The beautiful, the ideal, art is not defined easily. Why a Flandrin is so well executed, so correct in drawing, the part so perfect in execution leaves us cold and unfeeling, while Ingres, whose portraits are thin, paints like a door,— following the expression of Degas;— delights us and enthuses us; why!

[Variation: I have seen some paintings dreadfully executed redeeming themselves by a feeling of art so noble, that I think that beautiful execution is not absolutely necessary. I have seen by contrast, some perfect paintings which were horrible art.

The Flandrins are rather better made, more correct that Ingres!! But what an artist Ingres!

work is iJCd ULli Ui • J

Quality in art derives from unity; not particular­ ity, and is something different from execution or technique. Neither does the quality derive from subject matter, as Pissarro admonished the critics for assuming:

Even Huysmans, in his book, deplores this disease of the visual organ as corrective, thus he declares us cured...you will see, alas: like all the critics, under the pretext of naturalism, he judges as in literature, and sees most of the time only the subject. He places Caillebotte above Monet, why? Because he made the Planers of floors, the Rowers, etc. But then Delacroix is nothing? The ceiling of Apollo is nothing? 19 76

To Pissarro's mind, the external form of a work of art-- the overt subject, the technique of applying the paint, the artist's choice of medium, etc.— are simply means by which an artist gives form to his ideas. They are not determinants of artistic quality and value per se.

For Pissarro, art is the product of an artist's experience, as expressed in a letter of 1884:

My dear Lucien, don't worry yourself too much searching for the new, the new is not found in the subject, but in the method of expression. ®

Contemporary subjects did not make art contemporary or new. The touchstone was how the artist gave artistic form to his ideas.

When Pissarro wrote:

...as for my large canvases, I have two of them which you know, that I have thought over for two years, my Apple Eaters, I have worked on a great deal, I want to finish it for April. in 1883, he was speaking within the context of his contemporary advice to Lucien. He was searching for the form to express the subject of his La cueillette des pommes (fig. 36), a subject that itself was not new. He had painted an earlier composition in 1881 (La cueillette des pommes, (The Harvest of Apples, fig. 3 7 ) , ^ and then spent the next six years developing a much larger version, mediated by the 1882 tempera painting (fig.38). 77

A comparison of the four representations of an apple harvest, the grand Cueillette (fig.36) of 1886, the initial painting of 1881 (fig. 37), the 1882 tempera (fig. 38),^ and the jardiniere image (fig. 32) reveals a curious situation. There are no apples in the 1881 painting of

La cueillette des pommes, although they are present in the other versions of this subject. Why are there no apples?

Since there is no documentary evidence outside of the works themselves to explain this curious situation, a study of Pissarro's additions and alterations can provide a more complete understanding of Pissarro's creative method and his art. The paths of inquiry suggested by the study of his paintings and his methodology in the decade of the 1870's will illuminate other valid entry points. The answer to the question of why there are no apples in the apple-gathering of 1881 will reveal new riches in Pissarro's art.

The differences between the 1881 La cueillette des pommes (fig. 37) and the 1886 La cueillette des pommes

(fig. 36) are those between Spring and Autumn. It is that simple and natural. In the Spring, as the sap rises through the dormant tree, the leaves sprout from the branches and buds erupt into blossoms. Young girls thin 78

the blossoms to enable the remaining fruit to grow larger.

Soon the blossoms die and tiny nodes of newborn fruit

begin to grow. The apples increase in size throughout

the summer, ripening and turning from green to red to be

harvested at maturity in autumn.

Thus the two paintings represent stages in the

annual cycle of fruit-bearing trees. The light silvery

yellows and yellow-greens are the colors of Spring. Warm

reds and brownish-greens are the colors of Autumn, the

colors of the 1886 Cueillette des pommes, with apples.

This seasonal difference is developed further in the rows of herbage in the background. Growing in sparse small

clusters, the 1881 plants are seen as separate units arranged in rows; but in the autumn scene of 1886, these plants have lost their individual identities. Their

foliage has merged to form full rounded rows of dark green leaves. Suckers sprouting from the base of the tree are new growth that would not be found in

springtime, and are not found in the 1881 version of the

subject. The small object hanging from the branches on the right, like an effigy of the Virgin, represents the practice of placing amulets in trees in the springtime, especially fruit trees, to insure an abundant crop of

fruit. 79

Further comparison of the two paintings of 1886 and

1881 reveals a difference in the technique of applying paint. The looser impressionistic brushwork of 1881 is changed to a more controlled use of color and paint in the 1886 La cueillette des pommes. The earlier technique had given rise to a problem which had concerned Pissarro for some time, a concern which he expressed in a letter to Lucien in 1883:

Duret leaves today for London, he promised me to go to see you, he will give you news of my exposition. Useless to tell you that I have received quite a few felicitations. The most precious for me are from Degas who told me that he was happy to see me purifying myself more and more. The etcher Braquemond, student of Ingres, told me that it is stronger and stronger, etc., sincere or not I proceed tranquilly in the path that I have set for myself, and will try to make myself better; at bottom I see only vaguely if it is good or not. I am deeply concerned about my rough and initiating execution, I would rather like to have a more even technique, combining thus the same savage qualities without having the inconveniences of the harshness which permit the viewing of my canvases only in a light falling from the front; therein lies the difficulty, without counting the design.24

The coarse texture of Impressionist brushwork and the consequent broken pattern of light and shadow made it difficult to see Pissarro's paintings. Pissarro sought a technique of painting that would reduce this viewing problem while retaining the sense of immediacy and energy 80

of the looser facture. He found a solution in the more

disciplined, neo-impressionistic style employed in the

1886 painting.

George Moore wrote a brief description of Pissarro's

1886 La cueillette des pommes:

Speaking of a group of girls gathering apples in a garden, I wrote: "Sad greys and violets, beautifully harmonised. The figures seem to move as in a dream, we are on the thither side of life, in a world of quiet color and happy aspiration. Those apples will never fall from the branches, those baskets that the stooping girls are filling will never be filled, that garden is the garden that life has not for the giving, but which the painter has set in an eternal dream of violet and grey. " 25

Moore views this painting as an icon of reality

representing a place that exists outside of time. It is an idyllic metaphor that is as much state of mind as real event, a paradise that exists in a dream world.

Moore's response to this painting is an unintentional paraphrase of Pissarro's comments about a

Japanese art exhibition:

This is what I have remarked in the ensemble of the art of this surprising people: nothing that assaults the eye, a calm, a grandeur, an extraordinary unity, a splendor rather quiet, but it is brilliant! Itois surprising in sobriety and what taste! 5 81

Before exhibiting the La cueillette des pommes in the

last Impressionist exhibition, Pissarro wrote in August,

1885:

Calm, reflection, and at the same time passion for one's subject is necessary to make something of beauty. '

Pissarro's reactions to Japanese art, his developing

ideas about the nature of art, and George Moore's

response to Pissarro's painting reflect the same idea and

feeling.

The inherent artistic qualities of Japanese art were

reflected in Pissarro's ideas and given form in the large

painting. This influence was one of the reasons for the

changes in execution from 1881 to 1886. This change also

eliminated the interference caused by broken patterns of

light and shadow created by the rough painted surface.

This technical change enabled the images and composition

to be viewed without unintentional distortions, for that

which Pissarro wanted to express needed to be less

subject to accidental intrusion of external factors.

Consequently, the sense of timelessness and eternal moment was enhanced. The change in technique solved a

physical problem while enabling Pissarro to achieve

aesthetic ends at the same time. 82

Other changes and additions were made between 1881

and 1886. The groundplane was raised, and the point of

observation moved backwards, further from the tree, and

shifted to the left. By raising the groundplane,

Pissarro created an effect of backdrop on which the

figures have been placed. The upper branches of the

apple tree were eliminated, removing the distraction of

the complex patterning of interlaced branches. The shift

of viewpoint to the left allowed Pissarro to move the

apple tree towards the right edge of the composition,

loping off the angle of the triangle of shadow. The

trunk of the tree was moved further back in the picture

space and higher in the composition. The relocation of

the tree and the consequent elimination of the branches

altered the Maypole^-like function of the tree in the

earlier composition of 1881, in which the tree and its

branches created an umbrella of space around which the

three figures were arranged.

Pissarro eliminated the female figure in the lower

right corner. By extending the left border, the artist has changed the vertical format of the 1881 Cueillette to the more stable square composition of the 1882 tempera painting and the 1886 work. The stable, pyramidal shape

formed by the three female figures in the 1886 painting, 83 has replaced the less stable alignment of the two figures to the left of the tree in the 1881 painting. The large female figure in the lower left corner enhanced compositional stability. The kneeling figure of 1886 raises her rump to form a rectilinear shape, and the geometrical shape of the basket enhances the sense of greater stability and calm.

The small shattered tree trunk in the 1881 painting was transformed into the swollen roundness of a grafted trunk with four sprouting grafts. Sparsely growing rows of green plants have become wide bands of strong green foilage. The thin irregular stick wielded by the young girl in 1881 has become a straight sturdy pole in the hands of the standing female figure. And Pissarro added apples to the composition of the 1886 Cueillette des pommes to make a true harvesting of apples.

Thus the two compositions represent Spring and Fall and two different stages in the life cycle of an apple tree. Pissarro painted a Springtime scene in 1881 which he then developed into an autumnal harvest based on the same composition. He has created a metaphor of the seasons, and seemingly a metaphor for the evolution in his own work. 84

The 1881 painting can be more accurately referred to

as Thinning Apple Blossoms, to distinguish its subject

and seasonal character from the 1882 and 1886 apple

harvests. The sense of liveliness created through the

loose brushwork and composition suggests that the

painting was inspired by a scene actually seen in nature.

The question then arises as to what is the nature of that

event such that Pissarro would spend the next five years

transforming the 1881 painting into the metaphorical

pendant of an apple harvest. Camille Pissarro's art is

based on representing subjects that are within personal

experience.

Camille Pissarro was a perceptive observer of his

physical environment, as reflected in the observation of

nature in his art. Pissarro's letters also reveal an

articulate and intellectually analytic observer with an

insatiable curiosity for learning. He was widely read,

and attended literary discussions at various times in his

life. Pissarro had many friends in the literary and

theatrical community and corresponded regularly with some

of them during his career. Pissarro's literary friends

included the amateur Theodore Duret, the prolific novelist Elie Berthet, and also a writer, painter and

collector Etienne Baudry, the cousin of Duret. He knew 85

Albert Merat, a Parnassian poet, and the novelist Jules

Cardoze was his cousin. Other literary acquaintances

were the dramatic authors Marcellin Desboutin and Diego

Martelli. Pissarro's good friend Eugene Meunier dit

Murer was also a writer and a novelist, and Pissarro's

cousin Emile Petit was a playwright. In his

correspondence before 1886 Pissarro mentions Baudelaire's

Fleurs de Mai, Verlaine, Zola, and Proudhon. He read Guy

de Maupassant and Paul et Virqinie, comparing the two in

his letters. In Pontoise he had a strong relationship

with Truffaut, director of the Soci^te lyrique et

dramatique de Pontoise. Pissarro went to see a play

written by his cousin, Emile Petit with Truffaut at the

theater in Pontoise.

Pissarro attended a program of music with his

brother Alfred on April 2, 1883, after the opening of

Renoir's exhibition on April 1.

The program was very well composed: Schumann, Bizet (new for me), Berlioz (ditto). I would not know how to express how much I have been astonished by the Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet of Berlioz. It is of Delacroix, it is of Shakespeare, it is from the same family, he has the mark of these men of genius. It is prodigious in movement, imagination, strangeness^ vigor, finesse, contrast, terrible and sweet.28 86

Pissarro's appreciation of romantic qualities in an art based on narrative, his association of Delacroix and

Shakespeare and music in one thought, reveals an intellectual understanding of the arts that goes beyond

Impressionism. Whether it be naturalism in literature or romanticism in the theater, a play, a novel, or art criticism, Camille Pissarro is keenly perceptive and understanding, and very articulate in expressing his ideas. This deep involvement with literature and theater provides a rich source of ideas from which Pissarro will derive inspiration during the fourth phase of genre painting that began in 1881. This avenue of study will provide insight into the scenes of apple harvests, the other jardinieire images, and many other paintings

Pissarro created from 1881 to 1886.

Naturalistic literature incorporated scenes from contemporary life in the narrative. Plots were based on real situations and contemporary places and events, beliefs, and practices were employed in developing and embellishing the narrative. Writers and artists looked to the world around them for models and symbols.

Pissarro followed this practice in creating his paintings. The subjects were realistic; but as discussed 87 earlier, these subjects were often conceived as narrative events in a natural story.

The image of an apple tree and a woman in a garden has a long tradition in European art as the emblem of the

Temptation of Eve and the symbol of the Fall of Man. Yet how could Pissarro justify painting the representation of an event that occurred thousands of years before? It was an event that he could not have seen and was not within his experience. But, could Pissarro possibly actually have seen a Temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Pontoise was an old town dating from Celtic and

Roman times. ^ The central church of Saint-Maclou sits upon the plateau of the town-site, dominating the town and the surrounding countryside, the focus of religious festivals and events. The town was especially noted for its three annual festivals: the celebration of the feast day of Saint Gautier, founder and first abbot of the monastery of Saint-Martin-de-Pontoise, on May 4 each year (combined with the May-day celebration); the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin celebrated on

September 8 , and continuing for eight days; and the fair of Saint-Martin's that began on the feast day of the saint, November 11, and lasting for three days. During the Middle Ages, the people of Pontoise had developed an 88

elaborate ceremony and procession for the celebration of the Holy Sacrament. Of all their religious ceremonies, this was the most elaborate as l'Abbe* Trou reports in his

Recherches historiques, archeoloqiques et bioqraphiques sur la ville de Pontoise:

But of all their religious ceremonies, those in which the Pontoisians of the Middle-Ages deployed the most display, representation, allegory, and where symbolism abounded, were the processions of the Holy Sacrament and of the brotherhood of the Passion, established in the church of Saint-Maclou. One saw at the beginning, twelve persons in oriental costume, and carrying marks which made them recognizable as the twelve apostles. They were preceded in their march by the twelve Sibyls to whom antiquity attributed oracles on the Messiah, and a large number of persons from the Old Testament, who prefigured the institution of the holy eucharist, such as Melchisedech, by the sacrifice of bread and of wine that he offered; Abraham, who played there his part; the twelve children of Jacob, collecting the manna in the desert; Elijah, receiving his nourishment from the hand of an angel; David and his issue, eating the breads of proposition, and many other similar scenes; and always with great accompaniment of music, from oboes, lutes, cornets-^-bouquins, violins, guitars. This innocent and joyous phalanx of small children had the name "Angels,11 little angels; each of them were crowned with flowers. On their steps came the priests, the forehead equally wreathed a tress of verdure and flowers; then finally the people, with a large number of torches and large candles. The principal procession of the brotherhood of the Passion was on the first or second Sunday of the month of May. It was then quite the great scene of Calvary in action; no important circumstance in this restored mystery, 89

that they could try to represent with fidelity. They went back through the centuries to the beginning of the world, and beginning from there, they began by representing the great Fall of Man, and its lamentable results. One saw a garden of pleasures, carried on a wagon with four wheels. In the midst of the bushy trees, loaded with fruits, Adam and Eve appeared, in innocent and chaste nudity,and next to them a serpent with a female figure. The second mystery was represented by a sort of subterranean place, made with some black drapery, and all sprinkled with tears; one did not perceive the persons who dragged it; this place was called Limbo. Then was seen Noah's ark, the sacrifice of Abraham, those of Isaac and of Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, the serpent of brass, Golgotha, and an infinity of personages, recalling, one after another, all the great characteristics of the immolation of a

These religious ceremonials were terminated by the

French Revolution, but the churches were reconsecrated under Napoleon. Saint-Maclou was the first church in

Pontoise to be returned to its cult, and the faithful O 1 were allowed to continue to practice their devotions. x

The rededication of the churches occurred throughout

France, but the people of Pontoise had an intensity of devotion shared with few other towns, as noted by one of its historians, the Abbe^ Trou:

The original character of our town was always to feel things vividly; the Pontoisian is a being of warm and deep emotions. From this derived these brilliant processions, so frequently revived at every epoque of our history. Today again, in depicting the indifference which has paralyzed and chilled so many other towns, it is 90

to Pontoise, and to Marseille, that one must transport oneself, if one wants to find again, in all its original ardor, the holy fire and the genius of the processionsl And, without doubt, it is to the rare devotion for the divine Mary, this queen, inspirations of all celebrations of the heart and of the beaux-art, which these two cities are indebted. 2

Among all the churches and towns in Prance during the 19th Century, Pontoise and Saint-Maclou were among those continuing their religious processions. Here one could find an enactment of an apple harvest in the springtime, in the continuation of medieval theater and mystery plays. And it could be seen at Pontoise in a unique experience.

Pissarro would have been aware of this theatrical event. He had been familiar with Pontoise for more than twenty years, and had been a resident since 1872. He explored what each area had to offer in the way of things to see and do. His promotional description of Gisors was made in an attempt to entice his niece Esther to pay a visit:

Make Esther understand, you who are an artist, that Gisors has some art treasures made to enthuse a tourist of taste; tell her about the varied style of the church, the wooden doors, of Jean Goujon, the stairway, the geneological tree, the French frescoes (rare), and the beadle that I am going to forget in my vocabulary, the beadle is everything. I don't speak of the garden, the bas-reliefs of the town-hall, the museum with its stuffed birds, so extraordinary, 91

in short you will be able in completing the list of curiosities to inculcate it in her a little and to decide her to remain the longest time possible here. ^

Pissarro's keen interest in everything around him had no

limits. As an observer of peasant activities, he would

easily have known about the history of Pontoise and

Saint-Maclou and the religious processions.

The science of folklore and the comparative study of

mythology and religion had developed in the positivist

intellectual and artistic environment of 19th-Century

France and Europe. Artists, scholars, and social

scientists collected information about folk-practices and

studied the religious beliefs and social customs of the

past and present. Religious theater was a subject of

contemporary research and study in France, and Pissarro

would have been aware of this work through his interest

in the theater and the literary arts as well as through

his literary contacts. Jules de Douhet published his

Dictionnaire des mysteres ou collection qenerale des mysteres, rites figures et ceremonies singuli^res ayant

un caract^re public et un but religieux et moral...in

1854, an encyclopedic compilation of theatrical products

collected by the author. Douhet's publication was

followed by the Histoire du theatre en France. Les 92 mysteres, published by Louis de Julleville in 1880/ shortly before Pissarro began his symbolic phase of genre painting. This latter author developed the history of these plays within the general context of French history.

In 1878, the Baron James de Rothschild began to publish the volumes of Le mist^re du Viel Testament, a collection of the texts of French mystery plays. Baron

Rothschild stated his reasons for publishing this tremendous work in the first paragraph of the introduction:

Most of the writers who occupy themselves, in these later times, with the history of dramatic literature in France, have believed to find again, in the ancient ecclesiastical ceremonies, in the figurative literature of the Middle Ages, the origins of modern theater. This opinion will not be put in doubt as far as the mysteries and the miracles, which constitute the religious theater, but the canons of the councils demonstrate as far as the evidence that there is in every time, actors, singers, acrobats, in other words, a profane theater. The chain has not thus been interrupted in the modern representations. Art has only been made to suffer the vicissitudes of civilization or barbarism; religion has only introduced a new element.

The idea of transcultural and historic continuity that Baron Rothschild expressed in this passage is important to understanding Pissarro's painting of

La cueillette des pommes in all its forms. Each artist and culture, in every time, has its unique character from 93 which is derived the form with which ideas are clothed.

That is what Pissarro did in his paintings.

Influenced by what he saw in Pontoise, and by the general intellectual and artistic environment, Pissarro began to develop the idea of the Fall of Man within the context of an apple harvest, giving contemporary form to a traditional theme. The composition of the Cueillette des pommes, first conceived in 1881 as a thinning of apple blossoms or young fruit received its compositional form in 1882; the summation of form and idea and the resolution of the problem arising from the application of paint was finally achieved by 1886. This painting and related works in his oeuvre that Pissarro drew from in developing the painting, form a narrative beginning with that event and its consequences.

The annual procession and cycle of mystery plays by the Confrerie de la Passion in early May presented the

Fall of Man as embodying the idea of Original Sin, the first of a series of Biblical stories culminating in scenes from the Passion of Christ. This cycle symbolized the redeeming function of Christ in removing the stain of

Original Sin brought about by the actions of Adam and

Eve. Yet Camille Pissarro was a Jew raised in a strongly religious family of Sephardim. His father fought with 94 dedication to obtain readmittance to the Jewish congregation on Saint Thomas.Pissarro expressed strong religious sentiments on the occasion of his father's death and both sides of his family had been practicing Jews for generations.^ A note by Janine

Bailly-Herberg to a letter dated 1871 states that

Pissarro always respected certain religious obligations such as Yom Kippur.-*^ In a post scriptum to a letter dated March 12, 1882, he makes the following statement:

An article by Burty of a polarized glass has been called to my attention, he makes compliments about me being at the exposition with Degas, politeness without a doubt, of the rest which perhaps the opinion of a writer who has so much tenderness for the official men, they throw Millet at my head, but Millet was Biblical! for a Hebrew it seems to me to be a little curious!-*®

Pissarro affirms his Jewishness in contradistinction to the Christian character of Millet's art.

The presentation of the Fall of Man as embodying the

Christian doctrine of Original Sin would have no personal relevance for Pissarro; but as a Jew, the story of the

Fall in the book of Genesis, and the ideas developed from this story and the surrounding events, were part of his universal experience. Whether the Genesis account was accepted as historical fact or understood in the context of comparative mythology and religion, the story of the 95

Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden was part of Pissarro's background and experience. Millet endowed figures taken from contemporary rural environments, the activities of

French peasants, with a Christian sentiment, translating them into anonymous Biblical types. For Millet this is appropriate; but as a Jew, Pissarro must develop his subjects within the context of personal experience, which is the Sephardic tradition. Pissarro's ideas about art, as expressed in his letters, make the individuality of the artist a basis for successful art. For Pissarro the mystery plays would be good theater.

Camille Pissarro transforms the original inspiration of the mystery play in two dimensions. The figures, actions, and environment will be interpreted in terms of

Pissarro's experience in the contemporary physical world.

The Fall of Man will be presented as a scene that appears as real and ordinary with people, clothing and actions borrowed from everyday life. Pissarro will, at the same time, develop the images in terms of his experience and

Jewish traditions. The Fall of Man was originally a

Hebrew myth.

The mystery plays are based on the book of Genesis, where the scene is established in Chapter II, verses 8 ,

9, 15, 16, 17;39 96

God planted a garden in Eden to the east, and there He placed the man that He had formed. *Out of the ground God made grow every tree that is pleasant to look at and good to eat; the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.* God took the man; He placed him in the Garden of Eden to work and to watch it.* God commanded the man, saying, "You may definitely eat from every tree in the Garden.* But from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it, you will definitely die."

The dramatic events are related in Genesis III, verses 1 -6 :

The serpent was the sliest of all the beasts of the field that God had made. And he said to the woman, "Did God even say that you should not eat from all the trees of the garden?" *The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat.* But of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, "You shall not eat from it - you shall not touch it it - lest you die." *The serpent said to the woman, "You certainly will not die.* For God knows that on the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."* The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and desirable to the eyes and that the tree was attractive as a means of wisdom. She took of its fruit and she ate, and she also gave it to her husband with her, and he ate.

Medieval playwrights based their mystery plays on the simple narrative of the Genesis account, developing dialogue and dramatic action to enhance the histrionic presentation. The French version of the liturgical drama published by Rothschild is one of several versions of the 97

mystery play, some of which were written m Cornish. u

Since Douhet's Dictionnaire des mysteres of 1854 includes

no significant variations from these two versions, the

preservation of medieval tradition at Saint-Maclou,

Pontoise, would follow a similar text.

The dramatic needs of the story are few. The scene

takes place in a garden with a fruit tree and there are

three roles: Eve, Adam and the Serpent. The essential action involves Eve when she bites into the fruit of the

tree, while the dialogue between Eve and the Serpent explains her actions. After partaking of the fruit, she then persuades Adam to eat of it too, thus completing the action. Traditional representations of the story combine the three events into one image. The Tree of Knowledge, represented as an apple tree in full fruit, is the

central compositional device, setting the stage for the

story's action. Adam and Eve complete the composition by

standing beside the tree as Eve reaches for an apple and

* hands another to Adam. The seducing Serpent usually twines around the tree and its branches. In these visual representations the narrative development over time is conflated into a single composition.

Camille Pissarro has translated the Temptation and

Fall into a contemporary gathering of apples. The female 98 peasant who stands beneath the apple tree in the garden becomes a contemporary Eve. As a great shadow lies across the composition, the mythical event has been presented as a realistic event. And true to the seasonal reality of the inspiring occasion which occurred on the first Sunday in May, in the springtime, the real apple tree has no apples. Pissarro has portrayed the fresh light of the new growth of spring that he saw.

The 1881 Thinning of Apple Blossoms was Pissarro's original conception and was his first reaction to the inspiration of the liturgical drama and the initial translation into a modern scene. Pissarro transformed this initial idea into the more studied and seasonably realistic composition of 1882, which in turn was the basis for the grand La cueillette des pommes (fig. 36) of

1886. In this painting Camille Pissarro apparently achieved a synthesis of ideas that draw from his Jewish background, French folk tradition, and artistic models to create the final painting. The carefully developed composition incorporates images from Pissarro's oeuvre and from the world around him. It is not simply poses, and gestures, and figures but a content derived from the narrative context of the works. This synthetic creative process combining images from many sources will reveal a 99 narrative structure that infuses many of Pissarro's works.

Although traditional representations like Poussin's

Spring associated the Fall of Man with springtime, apples are ripe and ready for harvesting only in the autumn.

Thus, Pissarro changed the composition to an autumn scene, following the naturalistic requirements of his ideas about art and his understanding of Impressionism.

There was no need for a basket in the springtime painting because there was nothing to harvest.

Pissarro made a few changes in the pose of the standing figure representing the contemporary Eve. The long irregular stick that she holds has been transformed into a straight and stout pole, or gaule, grasped firmly in the left hand, fingers clasped firmly around the shaft of the gaule and the thumb locking the gaule into her fist. The Genesis account follows:

The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat.* But of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden God said, 'You shall not eat from it - you shall not touch it - lest you die."' (Gen. 3:2-3)

The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and desirable to the eyes, and that the tree was attractive as a means of wisdom. She took of its fruit and she ate, and she also gave it to her husband with her, and he ate. (Gen. 3:6) 100

Traditional representations of this event portray

Eve either plucking an apple from the tree (Hugo van der

Goes, Fall of Man, divided diptych, circa 1468-70; fig. 39) ^ or receiving an apple from the Serpent

(Limbourg Brothers, "The Fall of Man," Les tres riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry 1416; fig. 40).^ Pissarro has selected a natural event that reflects real practice, the use of the gaule to knock the apples down from the tree: "In Normandy they harvest with the gaule" and "In

Normandy they harvest with blows of the stick.The fallen fruit are then gathered up from the ground.

Pissarro translated the springtime practice of rapping fruit trees, especially apple trees, with a wooden stick or rod, to stimulate their fertility,^ into the autumnal practice of using a gaule to knock down apples. Both acts involve a similar pose, making Pissarro's seasonal adjustments easier, and this use of contemporary harvesting practice translates the literal Genesis account into terms of Pissarro's experience.

An iconographic source for this composition is found in Sephardic literature. The Torah Anthology. Me Am

Lo'ez, by Rabbi Yaakov Culi, Genesis 3:12 provides the reason for Pissarro's choice: 101

Some say that the error of Adam and Eve was that they assumed that God's true intent was not to prevent them from knowing good and evil. This could not have been God's intention in forbidding the Tree of Knowledge, since he does not withhold good from His creatures. If He did not want their eyes to be opened, He would not have created this tree in the first place. What they assumed was that God had forbidden them to eat from the tree in order that they not touch it. The tree was planted in the middle of the garden, which was a holy place, where the Divine Presence dwelt. It is logical that it be forbidden to come close to this place, just as it was later forbidden to enter the Holy of Holies. (Toledoth Yrtzchak). According to this assumption, if a fruit falls from the tree, it would be permissible to eat it. The entire reason for forbidding this fruit was that the tree not be touched; therefore, this prohibition only extended to picking the fruit to eat it. When God said, "On the day that you eat from it you will die," His intent was that they would die because they touched something holy. We also see this in Eve's words, when she said, "But the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, 'You shall not eat from it - you shall not touch it - lest you die.'" She described the tree as being "in the middle of the garden," so as to emphasize the fact that the main prohibition was because it was "in the middle of the garden," which was a holy place. It should therefore not even be touched. This also explains Adam's excuse when he said, "The woman that You gave to be with me - she gave it to me and I ate." What he meant was, "I myself did not pick the fruit to eat it. It was she who gave it tp me." He assumed that this was not forbidden. 5

This understanding of God's commandment to Adam and

Eve is not found in Christian doctrine or iconographic tradition. By using a gaule to knock down apples, 102

neither the tree nor the fruit is touched until it has

fallen to the ground. Pissarro's Eve remains in a state

of innocence and obedience.

Camille Pissarro's representation of Eve synthesizes many traditions. The pagan fertility practice of rapping the tree is assimilated to the story of the Fall of Man in Genesis and the realistic actions of harvesting apples near Pontoise. The symbolic identification of the Garden of Eden with spring and the presentation of the Fall of

Man on the first Sunday in May aligns with the traditional pre-Christian Mayday celebration which

Pissarro transposed into an autumnal harvest. Pissarro broke with traditional Christian iconography in his composition and rendering of the narrative conceiving the

Fall of Man in terms of Sephardic literature and a natural event. Iconography was determined by coordinating text and empiricism.

The reclining female figure eating an apple is a major addition that Pissarro made to the initial study.

Placed in the lower left corner of the painting, this large figure sits prominently in the immediate foreground and controls the observer's eye as it moves through the painting from figure to figure, drawing it back to the foreground. The importance of this figure is emphasized 103 by its role in the composition and by the fact that

Pissarro felt it necessary to add it to the painting, altering the composition to provide the necessary space.

The meaning of this figure is derived from works by

Pissarro and other artists.

The pose of this figure, first incorporated in the

1882 tempera study, is similar to other figures in

Pissarro's works. In Les sarcleuses, Pontoise

(Female Weeders, Pontoise; fig. 41),^ 1882, the female figure on the left end of the second row of figures lies on the ground in a pose similar to that of La cueillette, conversing with the kneeling woman on the right. Her hair covered by a scarf like the other women in the painting, she supports her upright torso with an extended left arm instead of resting it on a basket. The same pose is found in Pissarro's paintings of another subject, in two compositions of a mother and infant, dated to

1881, the mother figures recline in variations of this recumbant pose.

Basing his composition on Rabbi Culi's commentary on

God's commandment and the real practice of using a gaule,

Camille Pissarro was faced with deciding how to represent the actual act that precipitated the Fall. The woman eating an apple reclines in a natural pose that Pissarro 104 had employed for other paintings. How has Pissarro expressed the idea of the Fall through this pose, symbolizing a dramatically essential act within a realistic context?:

It is necessary to come back to the "harvesting of apples," a girl rises to reach with her gaule the high branches; the ripe apples fall, which another girl gathers together, a third curled beside her basket, that she has by her arm, brings an appetizing apple to her mouth, a colored scarf around her head; her large eyes are closed, she had full, red cheeks, and the moist lips of a healthy woman. 7

He employed a pose traditionally associated with the temptation of Eve and the Fall: a reclining female figure, resting on her side, thighs bent forward at the hips, lower legs bent backwards at the knees, lying in a coiled serpentine pose. This is the pose from

Michelangelo's Temptation of 1511, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.^® Michelangelo's Eve lies on her right side, legs bent at hips and knees, and torso supported by her right forearm bent at the elbow. De

Tolnay describes this Eve:

Eve...seated with bent legs in a pose considered from antiquity as an erotic position, has a voluptuous body outlined with rhythmic contours. Whereas her head is quite small, her bodily form is well developed. Her raised arm grows from her body like a branch, a vegetal character repeated in the parallel branch growing from the stump beside her. Her hands are soft and polyp-like. 9 105

Pissarro's Eve also has "polyp-like" hands; and,

like Michelangelo's Eve, it is with the hand of the left

arm that the fateful act is committed. And Pissarro

repeats the branch and stump in his compositions, both in

1881 and the evolved form of 1882/1886.

This pose and its metaphorical content entered

France through the School of Fontainebleau. Jean Cousin painted his Eva Prima Pandora in the 16th century, presenting his Eve in an elongated variation of the pose

used by Michelangelo. She reclines in the familiar erotic serpentine derived from antiquity, legs bent,

raised torso supported by the right arm, her forearm resting on a skull and holding a branch of the forbidden tree, while the left arm extends to cover the urn of

Pandora's disobedience.^® Jean Cousin has combined the

Eve of the Fall with the classical myth of Pandora in an emblem of comparative religion.

Jean Cousin incorporated another metaphor into the

syncretic iconography of his Pandora-Eve figure, for the pose assimilates the contemporary German emblem of a putti reclining on a skull which is an allegory of death.

Thus does Cousin's Eve combine the contemporary allegory of death, the classical myth of Pandora with its symbolic allusion to death, and the story of the temptation of Eve 106 and consequent Fall of Man. This is in addition to the erotic association of the pose, thus associating eroticism with death.

The serpentine pose has a rich iconographic tradition that continued to develop through the 19th century. The theme of erotic love is expressed in many forms, like Lucas van Leyden's Venus and Cupid (fig.

42)5^ of 1528 and the Danae Receiving the Golden Rain

(fig. 43)52 of Frans Menton, as well as Michelangelo's

Eve, reinforcing the idea that equates the Fall of Man with the acquisition of sexual awareness. A seated variation of this pose was used in Jan Saenredam's

Temptation of Man (fig. 44).53

The apple and biting into it is a motif associated with the Fall of Man and with allegories of the sense of taste. The print of Gustus (fig. 45)54 by H. Hondius I represents a woman in contemporary dress tasting an apple, repeating the pose that Pissarro employed for his painting of La cueillette des pommes in the 1882 and 1886 compositions. The figures have laid their right arms on a basket of fruit and hold an apple to their mouths with the left hand. This representation of the sense of taste recalls Genesis 3:6: 107

The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and desirable to the eyes.... She took of its fruit and also ate...

A more sensual description of Eve and the apple is found

in the mystery plays:

Thus should Eve take and harvest an apple from the tree while saying:

Oh what a delicious taste! Look at a most notable fruit; The taste makes me all joyous. So much is thirst diminished, Now it is my amusement (love-making) To have this tree for my pleasure; I will eat of it since it pleases jpe Because it is of grand substance. 5

The story of the Judgement of Paris comes from

classical mythology. Having to choose one of the three

goddesses, Paris selected the goddess of love, Aphrodite,

and acknowledged his choice by giving her an apple which

thereafter became an attribute of Venus. The apple

became an emblem of love and beauty. This motif of Venus

with the apple as her attribute was adopted by Jacob de

Backer to symbolize the sense of Taste (fig. 46).^ The

recumbent Venus holds the apple of victory in her left

hand in the familiar serpentine pose. Lucas van Leyden

employed a similar figure and pose for the Eve in his

The Fall of Man (fig. 47).*^

Thus does Pissarro's choice of pose for Eve of the

Fall have its source in several iconographic traditions. 108

The theme of death, a consequence of the disobedience of

Adam and Eve, is transmitted from the German emblem of

the putti with the skull and from the classical myth of

Pandora into the figure of Eva Prima Pandora painted by

Jean Cousin. The sexual theme and erotic pleasures are

transmitted through the personna of the mythological

Venus/Aphrodite and the Judgement of Paris story, while

Venus and her attribute of the apple has been assimilated to the image of Eve. Images of Venus and the apple, Eve and the apple, and allegories of Taste form an iconographic triad with interchangeable poses and gestures. The descriptive dialogues of surviving mystery plays expand the simple narrative of Genesis account into a rapturous description of tasting the apple and this gustatory delight associates the episode of the

Fall of Man with the sense of taste. Models more contemporary to Pissarro demonstrate the continuation of these symbolic traditions.

The sculptor Canova continued the traditional association of the recumbent pose and the apple with the goddess of love when he employed it for his Paolina

Borqhese as Venus Victorious (fig. 48),^ 1804-1808. His

Dirce (fig. 49),59 1819-1822, reclines in the erotic serpentine as she supports her raised torso by leaning on 109 a basket in the same manner of Pissarro's figure. Too, this same erotic pose was used by David in his painting of Madame Recamier (fig. 50)^® and by Ingres for the

Grande Odalisque (fig. 51)61 (1814), while Eugene

Delacroix made use of its erotic allusions in the well- known Femmes d'Algers dans leur appartement (Women of

Algers in Their Apartment; fig. 52)^^ (1834), and in etchings of the same subject found two versions,the

Juive d*Algers (Jewess of Algiers; fig. 5 3 ) ^ and his

Femmes d'Algers (Women of Algiers; fig. 54).^^

The metaphorical allusions of the various iconographic traditions in which this pose was employed, and which contribute to the latent symbolism within

Pissarro's use of that pose, are compatible with the

Genesis account of the Fall and the consequences to mankind for disobeying God's commandment. These are first related in Genesis 2:16, 17:

God commanded the man, saying, "You may definitely eat from every tree in the garden.* But from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it, for in the day that you eat from it, you will definitely die.

Additional understandings of the significance of

Eve's and Adam's disobedience are developed in Rabbi

Culi's commentary on Genesis 3 in The Torah Anthology. A 110 strong sexual theme, as well as death, is associated with the Fall of Man:

The Torah now tells how the serpent tricked Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Adam was the epitome of creation, as discussed earlier, so the Angel of Death put great effort into a scheme to make him sin. If man sinned, he would die [and the Angel of Death would be able to perform its function]. The angel examined every creature, trying to decide how to disguise himself to seduce the woman. When he could not find any creature more intelligent than the serpent, who then walked on two feet like a man, he used its form as a disguise. When the other animals saw him, they became terrified. At this time, Adam and Eve were completely naked. They experienced no shame, since they did not have any evil urge, and were not beset with lascivious thoughts. The serpent came upon the couple just when they were engaged in intimacy. He was immediately filled with lust for the woman; so he began to try to think of ways to kill Adam and take her for himself. Knowing that Adam could not be easily tempted, the serpent decided to work on his wife. If he could trick her into listening to him, she could tben talk her husband into doing the same. 5

The commentary is continued following Genesis 3:10-12:

But actually the forbidden fruit had nothing to do with intelligence. Before they ate it, they were inclined toward good. They did not even realize that they were naked, since they did not have any lascivious thoughts. But after they sinned, they were given an evil urge. Since they were flesh and blood, they were then drawn after their physical desires, becoming immersed in eating, drinking and the like. They then had lascivious thoughts, and were therefore ashamed of being naked. According to this, the sin caused Adam to lose an advantage that he had previously. 6 Ill

The themes of lust, sex, death, and physical desires are the motivating forces and the consequences of the

Fall. This is understood from the literal interpretation of Genesis and the expansion of this interpretation in

Jewish exegesis. These themes parallel the several allegorical and symbolic traditions that are assimilated to the figure of Eve through Pissarro's choice of pose and gesture. Sexual desire motivated the serpent to seek

Adam's death, which he knew could be achieved if he could bring about the disobeying of God's commandment to Adam.

Carnal desires and death were the consequences. As

Panofsky stated, in French tradition, Eve was Pandora, equivalent to Venus/Aphrodite, and brought death into the world through eating the forbidden fruit, experiencing the sense of taste by partaking of the attribute of

Venus, the apple.

Pissarro extended tradition through assimilating his personal background and tradition to artistic and iconographic traditions. He gave form to the idea he had expressed in 1884:

My dear Lucien, don't worry yourself too much searching for the new, the new is not found in the subject, but in the method of expression. 7

Camille Pissarro developed an idea that was part of

Western art tradition, and reinterpreted that idea in 112 terms of his experience. The Fall was an event which explained the nature of mankinds' origins and the reasons for his misfortunes. Camille Pissarro demonstrated his idea that:

...really Impressionism should be only a theory purely of observation; without losing neither imagination, nor liberty, nor grandeur, in the end all that makes an art that is great, but not some superficiality that makes sensible people swoon.68

With great imagination, liberty, and a sense of greatness

Pissarro synthesized tradition and experience to create the painting of the La cueillette des pommes.

In the later compositions of 1882 and 1886, Pissarro changed the form of the jagged tree trunk found in the lower left corner of the 1881 painting. The irregular broken tree with a few branches growing from the side has been transformed into a prominent image associated with the reclining peasant Eve. In the 1881 composition, the surviving branches emerge from the side of the trunk in a random manner, but the revised tree trunk has become a swollen fist from which four young branches grow. They are the new growth grafted onto the old stock of the once destroyed tree. As the grafted shoots take hold, the old trunk grows around the wounds, healing the cuts and forming a union with the grafts. The old trunk and the 113

new branches become a healthy organic unit as the old

gives birth to the new. Another example of a newly

grafted tree can be seen in Millet's Spring 1868-73 (fig.

15).

With this motif, Camille Pissarro has created a natural allegory for the forbidden tree and the forbidden

fruit in the Garden of Eden. From the Bekoroth, Gemara

9b:

Because it has been taught: the fruit of trees of the first three years...all of them receive the uncleanness related to food. [Note 6. And consequently forbidden for any use. Note 7. For although they are forbidden to be used, the uncleanness has the effect that should they come in contact with other food, the latter becomes unclean.]69

This restriction was initially set forth in

Leviticus 19:23-25:^®

And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all number of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years it shall be as uncircumcised unto you; it shall not be eaten of.* But in the fourth year all the fruit there shall be holy in praise of the Eternal.* And in the fifth year shall ye eat the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you its increase: I am the Eternal your God.

Rashi comments on verse 25, sefying:

This command which you observe will result in its giving you its produce in larger quantities. Because as a reward for it (for the fullfillment of My command) I shall bless for you the fruit of the plantation. R. Akiba used 114

to say: "The Torah says this because it has man's evil inclination in mind..."'-1-

The fruit of the newly grafted tree is also subject

to this proscription. Not until the grafts had obtained

the required five years could the fruit be eaten. The

Torah prohibits it, and Rashi provides a practical reason

for the prohibition. These ideas provide a truly

forbidden fruit that is compatible with Pissarro's

naturalistic instincts. This forbidden fruit makes all other food that it touches unclean.

A similar idea is found in French folk tradition:

When an apple tree or other fruit tree produces for the first time, one should let the fruit fall by themselves to earth. If one harvests them on the branches, one prevents the tree from developing and from doing what it should. 2

The reasons for this practice in French agriculture are

7 ^ similar to Ramban's explanation of Leviticus 19:23-25: J

Now the fruit of the first three years is not fit to be brought before the Glorious Name because it is small; neither does the tree in its first three years impart good taste or flavor into its fruit. Besides, most trees do not bring forth fruit at all until the fourth year. Therefore we are to wait with all of them, and are not to taste of their fruit until we have brought of the planting which we have done.... It is furthermore true that the fruit which comes forth from the tree when it is first planted, contains an abundance of moisture which attaches to and is harmful to the body and it is not good to eat it.... 115

This natural justification for a religious belief and practice places the idea about the fruit and the limitations on its use within the context of Pissarro's ideas about art. The small tree is truly forbidden, the fruit of which is not to be eaten until the fifth year, due to proscriptions contained in scripture, and for agricultural practical reasons.

A general prohibition against apple trees forms part of a Breton folksong, translated by Roland, Verse 7:

To touch the leaves of the tree is a venial sin; To eat of its apples is a mortal sin. 4

The apple tree as the forbidden tree and the apple as the forbidden fruit had become part of French folklore, carrying with them the symbolic associations derived from the Genesis account of the Fall.

The apple as an emblem of the Sense of Taste, a symbol of sexual love, and the instrument of the Fall is expressed in French folk beliefs and idioms associating the apple and physical love. A humorous Parisian phrase equates amorous activity with eating an apple: "Lovers do not embrace, they suck apples."75 Extending the symbolic relationship of the apple and sex, the phrase

7 fi "to eat an apple" is used to mean "to make love." 116

Eve's eating the forbidden apple was the critical event in the story of the Fall. God had forbidden this on penalty of death. When he discovered that Eve and

Adam had disobeyed him, he cursed them and ordered them from the Garden of Eden. In paying attention to and depicting folk practices, Pissarro continued the implications of the biblical narrative in the subjects that he chose for other paintings.

The consequences for eating the fruit of the forbidden tree are put forth and discussed in Genesis

3:16, 17-21. God speaks to Eve in verse 16:

To the woman He said, "I will greatly increase your anguish and your pregnancy. In anguish you shall give birth to children. To your husband shall be your passion, and he will dominate you." and Rabbi Culi continues:

The Torah tells us that the woman deserved ten curses because she was seduced into following the serpent's advice. These are the woman's ten curses: 1. The discomfort of menstruation which she experiences monthly. 2. The bleeding of a virgin. 3. The discomfort of pregnancy during the nine months that a woman carries her child. 4. The anguish of miscarriage. Sometimes a woman gives birth prematurely and the child is stillborn. All of her previous discomfort is then in vain. 5. The pangs of childbirth. 117

6. The anguish of raising children. She must nurse the child, dress it, rock it, carry it around, and clean it. 7. The fact that a [married] woman must constantly keep her head covered so that her hair should not be seen.... All of this would not be true had Eve not eaten from the Tree of Knowledge.... 10. The curse of death. '

Eve's curses center on the functions of child­ bearing and child-rearing, which will be a major source of physical pain and mental anguish for women. Pissarro appears to have considered these curses in developing his composition for the Cueillette des pommes of 1882/1886 and in designing the individual figures..

The seventh curse requires a married woman to keep her head covered so that her hair cannot be seen. The female figure in the lower left corner, biting into the apple and reclining in the pose of multiple allegories, the Eve of the Fall, wears a scarf that covers her head

"so that her hair should not be seen." She is distinguished from the two figures beneath the tree who are represented with hair uncovered. They are the women who have not touched the forbidden tree, nor tasted of the forbidden fruit. They are not subject to the curse that requires a married woman, a woman who has "eaten apples" and experienced sex, to cover her head. 118

The woman with her head covered forms an archetype

of the married woman or woman who is sexually aware.

Pissarro includes this female type in other paintings

that continue the narrative of the Fall and its

consequences. Le qouter, enfant et jeune paysanne au

repos (The Snack, Child and Young Female Peasant Resting;

fig. 55)^® repeats the recumbent serpentine and covered

head of the 1882/86 Cueillettes Eve, thus alluding to the

curses surrounding child-bearing and child-rearing

through the symbolic pose. Pissarro extends the metaphor

from the central theme of the fall to the subsequent

curses, employing scenes from his contemporary

environment to represent the reality of the curses. His

paintings form networks of natural and symbolic

relationships.

God speaks to Adam in Genesis 3:17-19:

To Adam He said, "Because you listened to your wife, and ate from the tree which I commanded you, saying, "You shall not eat from it," cursed shallbe the soil for your sake - in anguish you shall eat of it all the days of your life.* Thorns and thistles shall it grow for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field.* By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread - until you return to the ground, for from it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Condemned to toil endlessly this curse was directed at

Adam, to toil endlessly in the fields to raise his food, 119 to fight against the thorns and thistles that strive to supplant his intended crop. Yet Adam was able to circumvent this curse himself and for all men by relegating it to women and children. Andre Theuriet provides us with a contemporary description of the annual weeding of thorns and thistles in La vie rustique:

In the month of May, says a Breton proverb, the rye overflows the rows. The wheat is not as advanced, but it is already of a considerable height; watered by the rains of April, it grows thick,and with it, a vagabond vegetation of parasitic plants appears between the new stems, at the end of which one can already feel the ear which increases. It is not necessary that these strangers give way to the earth the nourishing sweat which should serve to swell the budding ear, and the moment has come to proceed at a labor of cleaning which has been consigned to the women and children. It is what they call the removing of thistles. One removes thistles with an old knife, or better, with the help of a tool terminated by a small blade twisted into an iron crook, which permits, thanks to a long handle to weed out the bad herbage, without bending too much and without treading on the young shafts of wheat. Although this is a female task, when the sun already hot falls steadily, she is not less fatigued, and more than one young girl straightens up with stiffness, when the crescent of the moon of May which rises, announces the end of the day. 9

Woman had received her own ten curses, but women and children had succeeded in doing the work for part of

Adam's curse. To their lot fell the task of removing the thorns and thistles that grow in the fields. They were 120

the weeders of the field, the sarcleuses. Their job was

hot, dirty, and difficult.

Camille Pissarro painted several compositions of

women in the fields weeding. In Les sarcleuses, Pontoise

(fig. 41, 1882), he has represented the figures, as the one on the left, in the recumbent serpentine of the Eve of the Fall with its implied symbolism. These sarcleuses are women after the disobedience of Eve and Adam who must

labor under God's curses. Through this pose that

Pissarro transferred from composition to composition like an emblem, he continues the narrative of the Fall to include its consequences. The compositions of women and children and the paintings of the sarcleuses, or weeders, continue the story; they are also real, engaged in natural actions.

As in Pissarro's paintings of the four seasons, the figures and the landscape are metaphorical labors of the seasonal cycle. Like the Eve of the Fall who bites into the apple, these women cover their heads so that their hair can't be seen, participating in the complex symbolism of Pissarro's Eve. They exist in the contemporary world of Pissarro, people involved in ordinary, mundane activities, yet expressing in the realism of the present the ideas of tradition. 121

The third female figure in the La cueillette des pommes, who bends over to gather up the apples, like the themes of the sarcleuses and the woman and infant, is related to other paintings in Pissarro's oeuvre. She symbolizes another aspect of Adam's curse: "...and you shall eat of the grass of the field." It is she who gathers up the grasses of the field and as was the case with the sarcleuses, this was originally Adam's curse.

The pose of the ramasseuse is found throughout Pissarro's work as she harvests crops ranging from apples to potatoes, sometimes simply referred to as Ramasseuse de l'herbe (Gathering of Herbs; fig. 56).®® This is the toil of the gathering of foods that mankind is condemned to endure. But the woman in the Cueillette des pommes, because she has not eaten of the forbidden fruit, wears no headcovering.

Through this choice of subjects and poses, Pissarro has created a realistic portrayal of the story of the

Fall of Man. Paintings are connected through similar poses which have a symbolic content derived from the story itself and from artistic tradition. At the same time, the individual compositions are realistic scenes.

This understanding of the Cueillette des pommes and its related themes extends to the jardiniere composition of 122 the Cueillette des pommes. It is the key to understanding the relationships among the four images themselves and their relationship to other works outside the jardiniere itself. 123

Notes to Chapter II

^ La cueillette des pommes (The Harvesting of A p ples). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1665, 19 x 39 cm., 7.5 x 15.4 in., oil on faience.

A good black-and-white illustration of this work is found in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Pissarro (1981), Cat. no. 213. A brief discussion accompanies the illustration.

^ La recolte des pommes de terre (The Gathering of Potatoes). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1666, 19 x 18 cm., 7.5 x 7.1 in., oil on faience.

^ Paysanne dans un champ de choux (Peasantwoman in a Cabbage Field). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1667, 19 x 18 cm., 7.5 x 7.1 in., oil on faience.

^ La Saint Martin a Pontoise (Saint Martin's Day at Pontoise). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1668, 19 x 39 cm., 7.5 x 15.4 in., oil on faience.

5 La cueillette des pommes (The Apple Harvest). 1886. P&V 695, 128 x 128 cm., 50.4 x 50.4 in., oil on canvas. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 64).

A large color reproduction is in Lloyd, Pissarro (1981), p. 105. The catalogue entry in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Pissarro (1981), Cat. no. 64, includes a good factual discussion of this work.

® Pissarro to Lucien, Osny near Pontoise, 22 July 1883, Correspondence de Camille Pissarro. Tome I: 186 5- 1885., ed. by Janine Bailly-Herzberg (Paris: Presses Uiversitaires de France, 1980), no. 171.

"... quant a mes grandes toiles, j'en ai deux que tu connais, que je rumine depuis deux ans, mes Manqeurs de pommes, j'y ai beaucoup travailler, je dSsire le finir pour le mois d'avril."

In notes to this letter, J. B.-H. identifies the Mangeurs de pommes as P&V 695, La cueillette des pommes. Pissarro's title for this composition indicates that the eating of the apple was the significant event in 124

the story, a point which will become more significant later in this discussion.

1 Pissarro to Lucien, Osny, 28 February 1883, Correspondance, no. 120.

"... reellement l'impressionnisme ne devait 'etre que une theorie purement d ’observation...."

® Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, February 2, 1893, Camille Pissarro. Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. by Lucien Pissarro and John Rewald, translated by Lionel Abel, 3rd ed., rev. and enlarged (Santa Barbara, Ca.: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1981) p. 262.

® Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, February 3, 1893, Letters, p. 263.

1® Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, Sunday [8 July ? 1883], Correspondance, no. 167.

"... ne pas n^gliger la nature"

H Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, 9 December 1883, Correspondance, no. 197.

"N'oublie pas les academies d'apr^s nature, les copies au trait avec indications des Egyptiens, et des figures gothiques, les vraies, comme nous en avons vu af Rouen; il faut te ferrer sur le dessin, pour le moment ne cherche pas la chose meme, plus tard quand tu sauras plus, si tu as ce qu'il faut, tu trouveras ton style... rappelle-toi que les Primitifs sont nos maitres, parce qu'ils sont naifs et savants."

12 Pissarro to Lucien, Osny near Pontoise, 25 December 188 3, Correspondance, no. 202.

"Si tu peux aller faire des academies, je te le conseille, mais rien ne t'emp^che de te rendre compte de ces merveillux bas-reliefs du Parthenon ou autres oeuvres choisies a ton goOt, car m&ne lk il ya ^ choisir. Mais ne pas oublier que l'on doit ^tre que soi m9me! Mais on ne l'est pas sans effort!" 125

Pissarro to Lucien, Osny near Pontoise, 13 June 1883, Correspondance, no. 159.

"J'ai parle a Degas du project que tu avais de suivie les cours de dessin de Legros. Degas m'a dit qu'il y avait un moyen d'eviter l'influence de cet artiste, le moyen est tr^s simple, le voici: c'est de reproduire chez soi, de memoire, le travail que l'on a fait au cours. Je suppose que tu commences l'ensemble de 1'acadCmie, de retour ^ la maison, tu prepares ton esquisse et tefche de refaires de itfemoire ce que tu as fait d'apres nature? le lendemain, au cours, tu termines une partie quelconques de ton academie; de memoire tu continue celle que tu fais chez toi? petit a petit, tu termines simultanement ton etude, ensuite tu fais la comparaison; tu auras de la difficulte mais il arrivera un moment ou tu seras”etonne"de la facilite^ avec laquelle tu retiendras les formes, et, choses curieuses, les observations que tu feras de memoire auront une puissance bien plus grande, bien plus originale, que celles faites directement sur nature; les resultat de ce dessin sera artistique, se sera un dessin a toi. C'est un bon moyen pour eviter l'imitation servile."

1^ Christopher Lloyd, Camille Pissarro (Geneva: Skira, 1981), p. 104.

33 Pissarro to Lucien, Osny, 28 February 1882, Correspondance, no. 120.

”... reellement l'impressionnisme ne devait "£tre qu'une th^orie purement d'observation, sans perdre ni la fantaisie, ni la liberte, ni la grandeur, enfin tout ce qui fait qu'un art est grand, mais pas de puffisme cl faire pamer les gens sensibles.”

33 Pissarro to Lucien, Osny near Pontoise, S./O., 17 February 1884, Correspondance, no. 219.

” ... sans legende, sans explication, ses dessins restent beaux." 126

1 7 . ± ' Pissarro to Lucien, Eragny-sur-Epte near Gisors, Eure, Thursday 21 August, 1885 (sic), Correspondance, no. 283.

"Il faut le calme, la reflexion et en nv£me temps la passion de son sujet pour faire quelque chose de beau."

Pissarro to Huysmans, [20 May 1883], Correspondance, no. 152.

"Le beau, l'ideal, l'art ne se definissent pas facilement. Pourquoi Flandrin qui est si bien execute, si correct de dessin, le morceau si parfait d'ex^cution, nous laisse froid et insensible, tandis que Ingres, dont les portraits sont maigres, peints comme une porte, - selon l'expression de Degas, - nous ravissent et nous enthousiasement; pourquoi!

[Variante: J'ai vu des tableaux effrayants d'execution se rachetant par un sentiment d'art tellement noble, que je pense qu'une belle execution n'est pas absolument necessaire. J'ai vu par contre, des toiles parfaites qui ^"taient horribles d'art.

Les Flandrin sont bien mieux faits, plus corrects que Ingres! Cependant quel artiste que Ingres!

On ne peut done defini pourquoi une oeuvre est belle.]" 127

Pissarro to Lucien, Osny near Pontoise, 13 May 1883, Correspondance, no. 148.

"M^me Huysmans, dans son livre, deplore cette affection de l'organe visual comme correctif, cependant il nous declare gueris...tu verras, h£las: comme tous les critiques, sous pr^texte de naturalisme, il juge en litterateurs, et ne voit la plupart du temps que le sujet. Il met Caillebotte au-dessus de Monet, pourquoi? Parce qu'il a fait les Raboteuses de parquet, les Canotiers, les etc. Mais alors Delacroix n'est rien? La plafond d'Apollon n'est rien?"

In this criticism of Huysmans, Pissarro distinguishes his ideas from the "modernists" with which T. J. Clark is concerned in The Painting of Modern Life. The subject does not determine artistic quality, or speak to the question of a work's modernity.

2® Pissarro to Lucien, Osny near Pontoise, S./O., 17 February 1884, Correspondance, no. 219.

"Mon cher Lucien, ne te tracasse pas trop a chercher du nouveau, le nouveau ne se trouve pas dans le sujet, mais dans la facon d 'exprimer."

2^ See Note 6, Chapter II.

22 La cueillette des pommes (The Harvest of Apples). 1881. P&V 545, 65 x 54 cm., 25.6 x 21.3 in., oil on canvas.

A large color reproduction can be found in John Rewald, Camille Pissarro (1963), p. 125.

2^ La cueillette des pommes (The Harvest of Apples). 1882. P&V 1363, 50 x 65 cm., 19.7 x 25.6 in., tempera. 128

24 Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, 4 May 1883, Correspondance, no. 144.

"Duret part aujourd'hui pour Londres, il m'a promis d'aller te voir, il te donner des nouvelles de mon exposition. Inutile de te dire que j'ai^recju pas mal de felicitations. Les plus precieuses pour moi sont de Degas qui m'a dit qu'il Ctait heureux de me voir m'epurant^de plus en plus. L'aquafortiste Braquemond, "eleve d'Ingres, m'a dit que c'est de plus en plus fort, etc., sincere ou non je marche tranc[uillement dans la voie que je me suis tracee, et. t^cherai de faire de mon mieux; au fond, je ne vois que vaguement si c'est bien ou non. Je suis fort trouble de mon execution rude et rUpeuse, je voudrais bien avoir un faire plus aplani, reunissont cependant les m^mes qualit^s sauvages sans avoir les inconvenients des asperites qui ne permettent de voir mes toiles que dans une lumiere tombant de face; la git la difficult^, sans compter le dessin!”

The question of Pissarro's concern with techniques can also be understood within the context of Shapiro's essay on the nature of abstract art. In addition to solving the viewing problem, it also represents a moving away from the Impressionist dissolution of form. Seurat's development during the 1880's led to the rigorous codification of Neo-Impressionism and the acceptance of Positivist ideas in response to social and economic changes. Yet Pissarro's expressed concern centers on practical rather than aesthetic concerns.

2^ George Moore, Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters, (Dublin: Maunsel Ed., 1906), p. 40.

2^ Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, 24 April 1883, Correspondance, no. 141.

"Voila ce que j'ai remarque dans l'ensemble de ^.'art de ce peuple ^tonnant: rien qui ne saute a l'oeil, un calme, une grandeur, une unite extraordinnaire, un eclat plutfct sourd, cependant c'est brillant! C'est ^tonnant de sobriete et quel go$t!" 129

See Note 17, Chapter II.

2® Pissarro to Lucien, Paris, 2 April 1883, Correspondance, no. 130.

"Le programme etait fort bien compose": Schumann, Bizet (nouveau pour moi), Berlioz (dito). je ne saurais exprimer combien j'ai "ete emerveill^ du Hamlet et du Romeo et Juliette de Berlioz. C'est du Delacroix, c'est du Shakespeare, c'est de la m'€‘me famille, il a la marque de ces hommes de genie. C'est prodigieux de mouvement, d'imagination, d'etranget£, de vigueur, de finesse, d'opposition, terrible et suave."

Denis (M. l'Abbe) Trou, Recherches historiques, archeologiques et biographiques sur la ville de Pontoise, (1841; rpt. Marseille, Lafitte Reprints, 1977. An abridged history of Pontoise is found in Emile de Labedolliere, "Pontoise," Histoire des environs du nouveau Paris, (Paris: Georges Barba [1860)), pp. 277- 292.

Denis Trou, Recherches, pp. 225-227.

"Mais de toutes leurs ceremonies religieuses, celles dans laquelle les Pontoisiens du moyen- age deployaient le plus d'appareil, de representation, d'allegorie, et ou surabondait le symbolisme, c'etait la procession du Saint- Sacrement et de la confrerie de la Passion, "etablie dans l'eglise de Saint-Maclou. On voyait a4 la premiere, douze personages en costume oriental, et portant des insignes qui les faisaient reconna'S'tre pour les douze ap&tres. Ils ^taient precedes dans leur marche de douze Sibylles auxquelles l'antiquite^ pr£te des oracles sur le Messie, et d'un grand nombre de personnages de l'Ancien Testament, qui ont figure^ l'institution de la divine Eucharistie, tels que Melchisedech, par le sacrifice du pain et du vin qu'il offrit; Abraham, qui y avait pris part; les douze enfants de Jacoby en recueillant la manne dans le desert; Elie, en recevant sa nourriture de la main d'un ange; David et sa suite, en mangeant les pains de 130 proposition/ et beaucoup d'autres semblables; et toujours avec grands frais de musique, de hautbois/ de luthsr de cornets-k-bouquin, violons, guitares. Cette innocente et joyeuse phalange des tout petits enfants avait le nom "d'Angelos", petits anges; chacun d'eux etait couronn€f de fleurs. Sur leurs pas venaient les pr£tres, le front egalement ceint d'une tresse de verdure et de fleurs; puis enfin le peuple, avec un grand nombre de torches et de flambeaux. La principal procession de la confrerie de la Passion avaient lieu le premier ou le second dimanche du mois de mai. C'etait alors toute la grande scene du Calvaire en action; nulle circonstance importante dans ce myst^re reparateur, qu'ils ne puissent ^ tcfche de representer avec fidelity. Ils remontaient les siecles jusqu'au berceau du monde, et partant de lkv ils commengaient par figurer la grande chute de l'homme, et ses suites lamentables. On voyait un jardin de delices, porte sur un char a11 quatre roues. Au milieu des arbres ^ouffus, charges de fruits, paraissaient Adam et Eye, dans une innocente et pudique nudite, et pres d'eux un serpent a* figure feminine. Le second myst^re “etait represente par une sorte de lieu souterrain, fait avec des draperies noires, et tout parseme de larmes; on n'apercevait pas les personnages qui le tra^naient; ce lieu s'appelait les Limbes. Se voyaient ensuite l'arche de Noe, le sacrifice d'Abraham, ceux d'Isaac et de Jacob, les douze patriarches, le serpent d'airan, le Golgotha, et une infinite de personnages, rappelant, les uns apr^s les autres, tous les grands traits de l'immolation d'un Dieu!"

31 Ibid, pp. 329-330.

32 Ibid, p. 225, note.

"Le caractere propre de notre ville fut toujours de sentir vivement les choses; le Pontoisien est un £tre ei 'emotions chaleureuses et profondes. De lei ces processions brillantes, et si frequemment renouvelees a toutes les "epoques de 131

notre histoire. Aujourd'hui encore, en depit de l'indiff£rentisme qui a paralyse et glace tant d'autres villes, c'est ei' Pontoise, comme s' Marseille, qu'il faut se transporter, si l'on veut retrouver, dans^Jtoute son ardeur premiere, le feu sacre et le genie des processions! Et, sans doute, c'est a leur rare devotion pour la divine Marie, cette reine, inspiratrice de toutes les fetes du coeur et des beaux-arts, que ces deux citCs en sont redevables!"

33 Pissarro to Lucien, Eragny-on-the-Epte near Gisors, Eure, 25 August 1885, Correspondance, no. 285.

"Fais done comprendre a Esther, toi qui es artiste, que Gisors a des tresors d'art faits pour enthousiasmer un touriste de goftt; parle- lui du style varie de l'eglise, des portes en bois, de Jean Goujon, des escaliers, de l'arbre genealogique, des fresques francaises (rares) et le bedeau que j'allais oublier aans ma nomenclature, le bedeau c'est tout un monde! Je ne parle pas du jardin, du bas-reliefs de la mairie, du musee avec ses oiseaux empailles, si extraordinaires, bref tu pourras en completant la liste des curiosites lui en inculquer un peu et la decider a* rester le plus longtemps possible ici."

34 James de Rothschild, Le mist^re du Viel Testament, Vol. 1, (Paris: Firmin Didot et Cie, 1878), p. i .

"La plupart des ecrivains qui se sont occupes, dans ces derniers temps, de l'histoire de la literature dramatique en Europe, ont cru retrouver, dans les anciennes ceremonies ecclesiastiques, dans la liturgie figur^e du moyen ^ge, les origines du theatre moderne. Cette opinion ne saurait “@tre mise en doute quant aux mysteres et aux miracles, qui constituent le th^Stre religieux, mai^ les canons des conciles demontrent jusqu'a 1'evidence qu'il y a en dans tous les temps des histrions, des chanteurs, des acrobates, e'est- a-dire un theatre profane. La chaine n'a done pas ete interrompue entre les represenations 132

modernes. L'art n'a fait que subit les vicissitudes de la civilisation ou de la ljarberie; la religion n'y a introduit qu'un element nouveau."

For a brief discussion of the Sephardic background and the problem of alienation from the synagogue, see Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper, Pissarro. His Life and Work, (New York: Horizon Press, 1980), pp. 18-20.

Pissarro (to Eugene Petit), Passy, January 21, 1865, Correspondance, no. 1 and p. 56, Note 1.

Pissarro (to Ludovic Piette), Westwow Hill, [n.o. 1871], Correspondance, no. 11, p. 67, Note. 1.

Pissarro (to Theodore Duret), Pontoise, 12 March 1882, Correspondance, no. 100.

"On me signale un article de Burty^ d'une glace polaire, il m'a fait des compliments “itant k l'exposition avec Degas, politesse sans doute, du reste quelle peut ^tre l'opinion d'un *icrivain qui a tant de tendresse pour les hommes officiels, ils me jettent Millet a la tfete, mais Millet ^tait biblique! pour un hebreu il me semble l'£tre peu, c'est curieux!"

^ Unless otherwise noted, all Biblical texts are from Rabbi Yaakov Culi (1689-1732), The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, 3 Volumes, 2nd ed. (New York, Maznaim Publishing Corporation, 1977).

This is because of Pissarro's Sephardic background and because the Me Am Lo'ez is "an 18th-century ethico- homiletical Bible commentary in Ladino, the outstanding work of Judeo-Spanish literature.... No work designed to instruct the Jewish masses had ever proved so popular.... For a long time the Me Am Lo'ez was the only literature for thousands of Sephardic Jewish families, and its reding was often considered a religious duty." (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1972, s.v. Me Am Lo'ez). The author, Rabbi Jacob Culi was one of the founding fathers of Judeo-Spanish (i.e., Ladino) literature." (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1972, s.v. Jacob Culi). For 133 further discussion see Kaplan, "Translator's Introduction," in Book One. Beginnings. From Creation until Abraham., Vol. 1 of The Torah Anthology, pp. xv-xxvi.

Gwreans an Bys. The Creation of the World, A Cornish Mystery, translated and edited by Whitley Stokes (London: Williams and Norgate, 1864), pp. 43-49, lines 538-851. The Ancient Cornish Drama, in 2 vols., translated and edited by Edwin Norris (Oxford: The University Press, 1859), Vol. 1, pp. 13-21, lines 149- 248. Also see William Jordan, The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood; Written in Cornish in the Year 1611, translated by John Keigwin and edited by Davies Gilbert (London: J. B. Nichols, 1827), pp. 41-63. Also The Creation of the World: A Critical Edition and Translation, translated and edited by Paula Ness (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982), pp. 43-71, lines 519-861.

^ Hugo van der Goes, Fall of Man, circa 1468-70. 13-1/4 x 9 in., Panel of divided diptych. (Cuttler, Northern Painting, fig. 183).

^ Limbourg Brothers. The Fall of Man, fol. 25V, The tres riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 25).

^ Eugene Rolland, "Pyrus Malus Sativa - Le pommier," in Volume 5 of Flore populaire ou histoire naturelle des plantes dans leurs rapports avec la linquistique et le folklore, (rpt Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967), no. 43.

"En Normandie on vendange avec la gaule."

^ Arnold van Gennep, Les ceremonies aqricoles et pastorales de l'^t^, Part 3 of Les ceremonies periodiques cycliques et saisonnieres, Section V of Volume 1, Manuel de folklore francais contemporain (Paris: Editions A. et J. Picard et Pi eft 1951), pp. 2164-2165.

^ Rabbi Yaakov Culi, in Genesis 3:12, Bereshith 8. Book One. Beginnings. From Creation until Abraham. Genesis I, in The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (New York: Maznoim Publishing Corporation, 1977), [pp. 265-266]. 134

46 Les sarcleuses, Pontoise (Female Weeders, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 563, 63 x 77 cm., 24.8 x 30.3 in., oil on canvas.

4^ Pissarro and Venturi, Vol. 1, Cat. No. 695.

"II faut revenir a la ' cueillette de pommes', une fille se hausse pour atteindre de sa gaule les branches hautes; les pommes m(h:es tombent, qu'une autre fille ramasse, une troisi^me accroupie ef cdte de son panier, qu'elle a au bras, approche une pomme appetissante de sa bouche, un mouchoir de couleur entoure de sa t^te; ses grands yeux se ferment, elle a les joues rouges, pleine, et ces l^vres humides de femme saine!"

4® This idea was suggested by John A. Phillips, Eve; The History of an Idea (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 67-69.

49 Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 31.

50 For a discussion of the symbolism of Jean Cousin's Eva Prima Pandora see Dora and Irwin Panofsky, Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), pp. 55-67. A monograph, Etude de Jean Cousin, by Ambroise Firmin Didot, had been published in 1872.

6^ Lucas van Leyden, Venus and Cupid. 1528. 16.2 x 11.5 cm., 6.4 x 4.5 in., (Hollstein, X, p. 157).

6^ Frans Menton, Danae Receiving the Golden Rain. 1570-1615. 21.3 x 26.7 cm., 8.4 x 10.5 in. (Hollstein, XIII, p. 35).

6^ Jan Saenredam, Temptation of Man. 1597. 22.1 x 14.1 cm., 8.7 x 5.6 in. (Hollstein, XXIII, No. 8, p. 10).

64 h . Hondius I, Gustus. 1573 - ca. 1649. 10.5 x 7.5 cm., 4.1 x 3.0 in., (Hollstein, IX, p. 86). 135

Le mist^re du Viel Testament, edited by James de Rothschild, Vol. 1, ’-'La tentacion de Sathan a Eve," p. 47, lines 1128-1135.

"0 quel saveur delicieuse! Voicy ung moult notable fruict; Le goust me rend toute joyeuse Tant est de soeuf apetit. Maintenant suis a mon deduit D'avoir cest arbre a ma plaisance; J'en mengerary puis qu'il me duit, Car il est de grande substance."

^ Jacob de Backer, Taste. Circa 1560-1590. 14.7 x 19.7 cm., 5.8 x 7.8 in. (Hollstein, I, p. 52).

^ Lucas van Leyden, The Fall of Man. 1530. 18.9 x 24.7 cm., 7.4 x 9.7 in. (Hollstein, X, p. 62).

Antonio Canova, Paolina Borghese as Venus Victorius. 1804-1808. Length, 200 cm., 78.6 in., marble. (Licht, Canova, fig. 109).

^ Antonio Canova, Dirce. 1819-1822. 96 x 175 x 78 cm., 37.4 x 68.9 x 30.6 in., marble. (Licht, Canova fig. 220) .

Jacques-Louis David, Madame Recamier. 1800. (Licht, Canova, fig. 111).

^ Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque. 1814. (Licht, Canova, fig. 112).

^ Eugene Delacroix, Femmes d'Alqers dans leur appartement (Women of Algiers in Their Apartment). 1834. 180 x 229 cm., 71 x 90-1/4 in., oil on canvas. (Poole, Delacroix, Plate 20.)

Eugene Delacroix, Juive d'Alqer. 1838 (3rd state). 11.1 x 17.5 cm., 4.4 x 6.9 in., etching. (Delteil, III, No. 101).

Eugene Delacroix, Femmes d'Alqer. 1833 (1st state). 16.0 x 22.2 cm., 6.3 x 8.7 in., etching. (Delteil, III, no. 97).

Culi, [pp. 259-260]. 136

66 Ibid, [p. 266].

See Note 31, Chapter I.

See Note 7, Chapter II.

"... reellement l'impressionnisme ne devait ^tre qu'une theorie purement d'observation, sans perdre ni la fantaisie, ni la liberte, ni la grandeur, enfin tout ce qui fait qu'un art est grande...."

Gemara 9b, Bekoroth, translated by Rabbi L. Miller and Maurice Simon, p. 61, in Seder Kodashim, The Babylonian Talmud, Part 1, Vol. 5, edited by Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein (London: The Soncino Press, 1948). 7 n Pentateuch with Tarqum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi's Commentary, translated and edited by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann with A. Blashki and L. Joseph Jerusalem: The Silbermann Family, 5733 [1932]). Rabbi Culi's work did not get as far as Leviticus.

Ibid, p. 89a.

73 Rolland, No. 19.

"Quand un pommier ou un autre fruitier produit pour la premiere fois, on doit laisser les fruits tomber d'eux-memes a terre. Si on les cueille sur la branche on emp£bhe l'arbre de se developper et de faire son devoir."

73 Ramban (Nachmanides), Commentary on the Torah. Leviticus, translated and annotated by Rabbi Dr. Charles B. Chavel (New York: Shilo Publishing House, Inc., 1974), p. 306.

7^ Eugene Rolland, "L'abre merveilleux," Verse 7, translation, no. CXC, in Volume 4, Chansons populaire.

"Toucher aux feuilles de l'arbre est un p^che^ veniel; - Manger de ses pommes est un p£che mortel." 137

7^ Rolland, No. 45.

"Les amoureux ne s'embrassent pas, ils se sucent la pomme."

76 Ibid, No. 70.

"Manger la pomme = faire l'amour."

77 Culi, in Genesis 3:16, Bereshith 9, [pp. 273-274].

7® Le gouter, enfant et jeune paysanne au repos (The Snack, Child and Young Female Peasant Resting). 1882. P&V 553, 60 x 73 cm., 23.6 x 28.7 in., oil on canvas.

7^ AndrC Theuriet, La vie rustique (Paris: Laurette et Cie, 1888), pp. 57-58.

"Au mois de mai, dit un proverb breton, le seigle deborde la haie. Le b l € n'est pas aussi avance, mais il est d^ja d'une belle hauteur; arrosC par les pluies d'avril, il pousse dru, et avec lui, une vagabonde vegetation de plantes parasites apparait entre les tiges nouveuses, au fond desquelles on peut deja sentir l'£pi qui grossit. II ne faut pas que ces ^trangeres derobent a la terre le sue nourricier qui doit servir a gonfler l'^pi naissant, et le moment est venu de proceder a un travail de nettoyage que l'on confie aux femmes et aux enfants. C'est ce qu'on appelle l'^chardonnage. On echardonne avec de vieux couteaux, ou mieux, a l'aide d'un outil terming par une petite lame contourn^e en fer de houlette, qui permet, gr^ce un long manche de sarcler les mauvaises herbes, sans trop se courber et sans fouler les jeunes tiges de b l £ . Encore que ce soit une besogne feminine, lorsque le soleil d^jel chaud tombe d'aplombe, elle n'est pas moins fatigante, et plus d'une jeune fille se redresse avec une courbature, quand le croissant de la lune de mai qui se leve, annonce la fin de la journ£e."

Ramasseuse d'herbe (Gathering of Herbs). 1882. P&V 1368, 36 x 17 cm., 14.2 x 6.7 in., gouache. CHAPTER III

v. THE JARDINIERE (1884-1885) - APPLE, POTATO, AND CABBAGE

HARVESTS AND THE FAIR OF ST. MARTIN'S

The four images of the jardiniere can be understood by means of a methodological study like that employed for the Cueillette des pommes paintings. And, as with the paintings, rich insights are achieved by searching for parallels in Pissarro's other works. In addition,

Pissarro has also used the pictorial structure of each composition to complement the iconography and enhance the meaning. It is the appearance of this structuralism which suggests a specific dating for the jardiniere, one that corresponds with the biographical analogies suggested by the images as well.

Each of the four scenes Pissarro chose for the decoration of the jardiniete represents a different aspect of the harvest season. Three - the gathering of apples, the digging of potatoes, and the patch of ripe cabbages - have obvious association with harvesting; but, it is the fair of Saint-Martin's that serves as the key to the meaning of these harvest events. November 11 is

138 139

traditionally Saint Martin's Day, and in Pontoise this day was especially important. The town had been the site of a great fair in honor of the saint even before it

received a royal prerogative from Louis XII in June,

1514. Then, this celebration had lasted as long as eight days, but by the late nineteenth century, it had been reduced to three days. This fair is the same one that was once described as "...the most considerable and the most curious in the area around Paris.

Saint-Martin's Fair was a celebration of the end of the agricultural year, the completion of the annual cycle of planting and harvesting. The wheat had been threshed, the hay stacked, and the field plowed and sown with next year's crop of winter wheat. The major work of the season was over, winter had not yet begun, crops had been sold or stored and now it was a time to relax, meet friends, and celebrate.

The four scenes depict this autumnal season. Like the produce harvested from the vegetable gardens and S 0 orchard that is loaded aboard the jardiniere'1 wagon,

Pissarro's scenes adorn the sides of a jardiniere;J so too, the scenes and plants allude to the Pissarro family's own jardiniere, the fertility of his wife Julie

Vellay Pissarro and mother of their numerous progeny. 140

These vegetables and fruit even allude to what will be served at the family dinner table.

Thus, the jardiniere has a relevance to both the observed activities in and around Pontoise where the

Pissarros are living, in general, and to the family, in particular. For the Pissarros the time is that of Rosh

Hoshanah, the beginning of the Jewish year:

On the first of Tishri is new year for years, for release and jubilee years, for plantation and for [tithe of] vegetables.^

It is the Feast of Booths,

The fifteenth of Tishri, which is the date of the Sukkot (Lev. 23:34), is also the date "when you have gathered in the fruits of the land" and therefore "you shall keep the feast of the Lord seven days" (Lev. 23:39). In other words, there is a concurrent date for both holidays, the agricultural and the historical.

The original name of the festival was Feast of Ingathering (Asif); it celebrated the ingathering of summer crops and fruits, and the close of the agricultural year.

Moses Maimonides, known also as Rambam, wrote of

Succoth in his The Guide of the Perplexed:

The festivals are all for rejoicings and pleasurable gatherings, which in most cases are indispensable for man; they are also useful in the establishment for friendships, which must exist among people living in political societies. There is a particular reason for every one of these days... The [Festival of] Tabernacles, which aims at rejoicing and gladness, lasts for seven days, so that its meaning be generally known. The 141

reason for its taking place in the season in question is explained in the Torah; When thou qatherest in thy labors out of the fi-eld (Exod. 23:16); this refers to the season of leisure when one rests from necessary labor. In the ninth book of the "Ethics," [Note 7. In fact, the passage occurs in Book VIII (1160a 25-28) of the Nicomachean Ethics.] Aristotle states that this was the general practice of the religious communities in ancient times. He says literally; The ancient sacrifices and gatherings used to take place after the harvesting of the fruit. They were, as it were, offerings given because of leisure. This is literally what he says.

Succoth, known also as the Feast of Booths or the

Festival of Tabernacles, was part of the general tradition of harvest festivals found in all cultures. At

Pontoise, this annual festival was Christian and celebrated as Saint-Martin's Fair. While the idea of comparative religion had entered the mainstream of Jewish thought during the Middle Ages through the writings of

Maimonides, Pissarro, following the tradition, said

...the new is not found in the subject, but rather in the way of expressing it.

Thus, apparently for him, the correspondence of Saint-

Martin' s Fair and Succoth would present no problem.

From the perspective of Christian and Jewish tradition, the natural harvest cycle and its practices are made more than ordinary. 142

The punning references to Julie Pissarro as a jardiniere also associates her person and activities with the images that Pissarro used to decorate the jardiniere.

As has been shown, this association of fruits and vegetables with woman and the harvest has traditionally been illustrated in allegories of the Sense of Taste, where, frequently, a woman stands with an apple in her hand and a basket full of harvested fruit is shown beside her as she bites into the lusciously ripe fruit. This reference to eating embodied in the Sense of Taste also has traditional association with the Temptation of Eve and the subsequent Fall of Man. So, too, it is an erotic emblem having strong sexual connotations.

Even humorous versions of this association of ripe fruits and vegetables with woman are extant. From the

17th century, a French engraving entitled Elle est tombe",

Q j 1ai vu son... (She has fallen, I saw her...; fig. 57) associates the overturning baskets of ripe fruit and vegetables - bunches of carrots and turnips, cabbages and apples - with the abundant womanhood of the female seen falling from the donkey. These ripe fruits of a fertile harvest allude to the full ripe harvestable peasant woman as she falls backwards onto her rear end, her legs falling open. The ogling peasants gawk with great 143 delight at her thus revealed womanness; she is synonymous with the fertile soil in which seeds are planted and from which the fruits are harvested. She is a jardiniere in whom seeds are planted, grow and are harvested. As woman, she is both the soil and cultivator, providing both nutrition and procreation, maintaining and sustaining life through her activity.

Whether treated humorously or not, the association of woman with fruits and vegetables constitutes a traditional emblem of fertility and abundance with the child literally being the fruit of the womb:

R. Hisda said ...It teaches that [God] built Eve after the fashion of a storehouse. Just as a storehouse is narrow at the top and broad at the bottom so as to hold the produce [safely], so a woman is narrower alpQve and broader below so as to hold the embryo.

So, too, the woman is held to be the storehouse until the child is ripe.

The four paintings that Pissarro created for the decoration of the jardiniere can be understood in these religious and emblematic traditions. Like the Sense of

Taste and Elle est tombe..., the jardiniere becomes an emblem of fertility and a metaphor of woman, both through its images and as a physical object. In addition, it is 144 an emblematic portrait of Julie Vellay Pissarro as

jardiniere.

Each of the scenes that Pissarro selected for the

jardiniere has its own symbolic tradition. The cabbage,

"chou", has an especially rich symbolism, one frequently encountered in French folklore. It is a symbol of fertility, serving as the central symbol in the elaborate nuptial ritual reported by Georges Sand in Promenades autour d'un village (1866) [For those who would like the complete relevant text of this, see Appendix A]. The bride as jardiniere and groom as jardinier play out their betrothal and marriage rites around the cabbage, as an image of fertility.

This relationship between cabbages and matrimony is also found in Paul Sebillot, where soup also plays an important role:

Cabbages are frequently associated with matrimonial customs. In the Castrais, the young people steal them in order to make a soup which is served to the brides in the course of the evening; if they are not stolen, this would be to fail to observe the custom; in the Creuse, the chicken which has been walked everywhere is killed in the evening with a cabbage; the cabbage and chicken cooked together are sent to the husband and wife when they are in the bed. In Maine-et-Loire, from the morning, the day after the marriage, they hitch all the cattle of the farm to the best wagon and the entire company goes into a field of cabbages; they choose the most beautiful, then they dig a circular trench 145

at a certain distance and approach it with a great air of work and trouble. When the cabbage is exposed, each man in the wedding party tries to pull it out with simulated efforts, and of course, he can not succeed. This honor is reserved for the husband, who after having feinted great trouble, succeeds in pulling it out; they equip themselves with levers and ropes, and they succeed in placing it on the wagon and it is carried in triumph to the abode where the women seize it. In Berry, the planting of cabbage, symbol of fecundity, takes place on the second or third day of the marriage.

The folk association of cabbage and the moon seems to be ubiquitous in France.

The ancient superstitions relative to the action of the stars on destiny are still alive among the peasants. It is especially to the moon that they accord a genuine power, and it exerts it quite certainly before birth. This belief has turned up in two areas of Basse- Bretagne: a young girl or a young woman who goes out at night to urinate, must never turn towards the moon when she satisfies this need, especially if the moon is like, it is said in the its first quarters or is waning; she exposes herself to being loaret or moonstruck, otherwise said to conceive by virtue of the moon. People cite examples of young women or young girls who have given birth to sons of the moon, and who for this reason people call loaret, lunatics. In the area of Morlaix, those who, going out in the same case when the moon is shining, have the imprudence to lower their guard too much, being turned towards the star, run the risk of conceiving under its influence and giving birth to a monstrous being.

The folk belief that pregnancy could be caused by the moon derives from the expedient explanation of pregnancies resulting from late night rendezvous with a 146 lover. And, by citing the moon as responsible a folk parallel to the Immaculate Conception is created.

So, too, folk association of woman, moon and pregnancy due to indiscretions is assimilated to the cabbage. The explanation for bastards is found in the following example: "He was found under a cabbage; said of a man whose lineage is unknown.& seventeenth century poem expressed this differently:

Phebus was never your father; Do you not see indeed that your mother Was given you to keep, poor fool? They have found you beneath a cabbage, And you want to draw your lineage From a divine quintessence...

Sebillot reports that:

In almost all of France, they tell the children they have found them under a cabbage, and sometimes the parents, when speaking to them of a time anterior to their birth, add that it was of the time when they were still in the cabbages. In the 18th century, people said of a man whose lineage was unknown, that he was found under a cabbage, and a poet of the 15th century spoke of a personage who prides himself on his ancestry:

How he has spurted out from a hole. In truth, or of the lineage of a cabbage Child of some gardener.

They say that is it the boys who one gathers under the cabbages... A large number of signs of midwives even in Paris, represent a lady taking in an infant in the midst of cabbages.

In these ways, French folks connected the cabbage image with fertility in marriage rituals, often enriching 147 other folk beliefs and idioms. There are frequent allusions to assignments, midnight rendezvouses and sex for pleasure outside of marriage.

It is in the latter context that the cabbage became both a symbol of immorality and the loose conduct of females. The correlation between a woman and cabbage is made in the following poem:

And that it was a cunning rake After having been made from a woman Like some cabbages from his garden, From abandoning her in disdain.

A similar sentiment is expressed more directly in a short dicton:

June, July, August, Neither woman nor cabbage. 7

On the first of May:

in the Vendee, in general, the stupid girl finds a sunflower, the one of light conduct a branch of elderberry or an enormous cabbage.18

Sebillot summarizes this folk attitude:

The cabbage ordinarily has a disgraceful significance: In the Suisse romande, to plant cabbage to someone, is to pay them a bad compliment. In many regions, cabbage is attached, on the first of May, to the door of young girls whose conduct has been light. In Basse-Bretagne a head of cabbage placed on the door indicates to the bazvalan that the proposition of marriage was refused.19

Thus, it is that this humble vegetable carries a heavy load of symbolism. It is a fertility symbol, 148

having connotations of dishonor and indiscretion. Women

who had become pregnant outside of marriage are said to

have found their children under a cabbage; and it is a

popular term of endearment to call one's children "petit

chou" or "mon chou." It is against this understanding

that one needs to place Pissarro's scene of a Paysanne

dans un champ de choux (fig. 34), especially as it is

joined with the other three scenes having related images,

complimentary meanings, etc.

Now, let us examine the folk context for the potato,

"pomme de terre." It is the pendant to the cabbage

composition and shares with that vegetable a similar

symbolic tradition. However, it was relatively new to the European diet, having been imported from the

Americas. In 1619, the writer Gaspard Bauhin wrote in his Prodromus Theatri Botanici;

Our own people [of the city of Basle] sometimes roast them under embers in the manner of tubers [truffles] and having taken off the cuticle eat them with pepper; others having roasted them and cleaned them cut them up into slices and pour on fat sauce with pepper and eat them for exciting Venus, increasing semen; others regard them as useful for invalids since they believe them to be good nourishment. They nourish no less than chestnuts and carrots and are flatulent.2*5 149

However, one should note that

... when the writers of the early seventeenth century speak of the "common potato" they, ...had in mind the sweet potato. So late in 1637 the horticulturist, John Goodyear who, whenon a visit to his brother-in-law William Yalden's home at Sheet in Hampshire, records that he saw Battata Hispanorum (the sweet potato) or "common potato" growing there and that the tubers, howsoever they may be dressed, they comfort, nourish, and strengthen the body procuring bodily lust and that with greediness. It was a simple case of transference to a synonymous newcomer of an attribute which has been enjoyed by its predecessor.

The qualities attributed to the sweet potato were acquired, through association, by the common potato as we know it. "This acquired reputation was, in its more restricted sense, slow to die; but its corollary that it induced large families, had a much longer life, and was held by some serious writers so late as the end of the last century."^2

William Salmon in his 1710 Herbal discusses the potato in detail:

He distinguishes between "Qualities" and "Virtues." Of the former he tells us: "The Leaves of the Potato are manifestly hot and dry in the beginning of the second Degree, as manifestly appear by Taste. But the Roots are temperate in respect to heat and cold, dryness and moisture: They Astringe, are mildy Diuretick, Stomatick, Chylisick, Analeptic, and Spermatogenetik. They nourish the whole Body, restore in Consumptions, and provoke Lust. 150

The preparations he advises are: (1) boiled, baked or roasted roots, (2) the broth, (3) sanguis, the blood. Salmon then describes the "Virtues":

The Prepared Roots. They stop fluxes of the Bowels, nourish much, and restore in a pining Consumption.... they increase Seed and provoke Lust, causing fruitfulness in both Sexes: and stop all sorts of Fluxes of the Belly. The Broth of the Roots...... It has all the Virtues of the Roots eaten in Substance, nourishes more, and restores not only in an Atrophia, or pining Consumption, but also in a Phthsis or Ulceration of the Lungs. Sanguis, or the Blood of Potatoes. ... It restores in deep Consumption of all Kinds, nourishes to admiration, is good against Impotency in Men and Barrenness in Women, and has all the virtues of both the Prepared Roots and the Broth. 3

The potato, the parts of the potato plant and the by-products from its cooking were considered to have aphrodisiac properties, to stimulate lust and to induce fertility where it had been absent. These ideas were also found in France:

The aphrodisiacal reputation of the sweet- potato suffered a sharp revival in France and in the French Empire after Napoleon's marriage with Josephine. The latter, being a Creole, was from her youth very fond of the root, and although they had gone completely out of cultivation in France, she caused them to be grown at Malmaison and later at Saint Cloud, whence they were served at court banquets. It soon became the fashion for courtesans to regard the sweet- potato, a dish patronized by the highest, as the one best suited to their endeavors, and market gardeners responded by growing it in quantities. 151

Pissarro himself, as well as his mother Rachel Manzana-

Pomie, were born in the New World, from which the potato had been exported to Europe. The folklore of the potato/sweet-potato was part of his childhood background.

The French, like the German, belief in the fecondating efficacy of the potato was shared by both types of potatoes. One variety of solanum tuberosum had been given a symbolic name:

La vitelotte is thus named because of its phallic shape; it is presented with other vegetables, to the bride, the day of her marriage. ^

But like the cabbage, the potato also possesses perjorative connotations:

Potato peels placed on the first of May, before the door of a girl. symbolize the contempt that one has for her. °

The gift of a "bouquet of potatoes" is an insult to a young woman in Picardy.2^ In Russia it was reported that:

The Russian clergy, imbued with their own retrograde ideas, anathematized potatoes upon their appearance on Russian soil; they pretended it was impure nourishment, good for pigs and Germans who brought them from their country. Finally, from the position of the pulpit, they said, in the Greek rite churches, that it was a sin to eat potatoes.28

Aphrodisiac and fecundative powers and potential negative connotations with respect to young girls and 152

women are thus shared by both the pomme de terre and the

chou. Juxtaposed with the apple, both in folk belief and on Pissarro's jardiniere, the potato's association with

the Fall of Man and the resultant consequences are

relevant to the context of all four scenes. Together

with the apples of Cueillette des pommes, these three objects have a similar symbolic identity, for while the pomme derives much of its character from its Biblical association, it too has an extensive folkloric background.

The aphrodisiac power of the apple.is the subject of a humorous anecdote:

♦ One day, the celebrated Du Fouilloux wanted to seduce a shepherdess, by means of a philter which was nothing more than a red apple. But a sow having eaten it pursued the unhappy suitor with her amourous ardor.29

A short tale is based upon the fertility-inducing attribute of the apple.

A queen who did not have a child, cut into four pieces an apple in which the devil in disguise had made himself present; she gave a piece of it to her husband, ate the three others and became the mother of a little girl.30

And, the apple and the apple tree are used as an allegory referring to physical and sexual development in a small poem: 153

Daughter of the king, Farewell to your virginity! And yet you should not shed tears about this Because the apple tree which bears well fruit.. Is better than that which bears only flowers31

This folk quatrain paraphrases the story of the Fall of Man, as the transformation of the young girl into a woman is compared to the apple tree whose blossoms become ripe fruit. But instead of the consequences of the Fall, the poem idealizes the mature state. The association of the apple with physical and sexual desires also forms the basis for two idioms:

Lovers do not embrace each other, they suck apples;32 and,

To eat apples = to make love.33

The eating of an apple is equated with foreplay and the sexual act itself. In a legitimate use of the apple:

At the time of the Renaissance, those who wanted to force by marriage women to love them helped themselves with an apple that they gave them to

A further example where an apple serves as a marriage offering is:

The apple serves, in some communities of the region of Redon, as a kind of amourous communion; who goes to ask a girl to marry whom he has known since his childhood, takes care to provide himself with an apple, and when he finds himself with her, he bites it while saying: Do you love me? Do you love me not? If you love 154

me, bite into my gift! If the girl accepts, marr-iage is decided upon; if she refuses, all is broken off. At the time of the marriage, fruit serves, without it being necessary to speak, to make known how she will be welcomed... 5

The apple is also used to refer to the body of a woman and its parts. This is similar to the metaphorical use of the ripening of apples from the flowers, discussed above, to symbolize becoming a woman. It is similar to the wordplay between the Italian figu or fig, which was used as the forbidden fruit, and ficu or female genitalia.^ It is used to refer to a specific arrangement of the hair:

To be coiffed in a gathering of apples = having one's hairdo on the back of the head. 7

The apple can be another word for a woman's breasts:

* 3 0 Little apples = breasts of a woman. °

The short dicton:

Girls and apples Are the same t h i n g . 9 equates young girls and apples. Of course none of this would have any meaning if a woman obeyed the following maxim:

If Woman knew what went with the apple Never would she have given it to Man.40

It is the apple which is the source of her troubles. 155

The ideas of misbehavior and disobedience associated with the apple through the figure of Eve is reflected in other French folk beliefs:

On the first of May, the branch of an apple tree planted before the house of a young girl symbolically indicates that she drinks.

To place a branch of an apple tree on the first of May in front of the window of a girl is to say to her that she has an amourous temperament.4 2

The French employ the name of a variety of pyrus malus sativa, known as the pomme poire in referring to a woman of loose moral character:

One calls pomme-poire a girl of light morals whether she is a girl, a woman, or a widow.4,3

The ethrog, or citron, is considered to be the fruit of the tree of knowledge in Jewish tradition:

The etrog is also called "Adam's apple" or "paradise apple" and in Gen.R.XV.7 among the fruits the etrog is suggested as having been the forbidden fruit of which Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden; "for it is said, 'the tree was good for food' (Gen.iii.6.). Which is the tree whose wood can be eaten as well as the fruit? It is the etrog."44

The ethrog acquired attributes in Jewish folk tradition and correspond with those of the apple. The

French know the citrus medica or ethrog as the "pomme d'Adam."45 156

There was:

... a widespread, popular belief that a pregnant woman who bites into an ethrog will bear a male child."; and,

... according to papers found in the Cairo Genizah, [the etrog1 was also utilized to concoct a medicine. ° A belief prevailed that this prescription was especially potent for women who had difficulty in giving birth. Pregnant women would bite off the proturberance (pitma) of the etrog on Hoshana Rabbah, distribute charity to the poor and recite this prayer:

Lord of the universe, if one woman, Eve, tasted the apple, shall Your wrath fall on all women? If I had been in the Garden of Eden at that time, I would not have listened to the snake and I would not have tasted the apple. 1^ did not eat and I did not reap the benefit of the etrog during the seven days of Sukkot, as it was then ordained to fulfill a commandment. Even today, Hoshana Rabbah, when the time is passed for the observance of the commandment, it is not my wish to enjoy its use. In the same manner, as I had only slight benefit of the pitm a , so in the Garden of Eden I would have used the tree of knowledge that was forbidden to be eaten.

There was a popular legend in Germany that Princess Louise, the daughter of Prince Charles of Mecklenberg-Strelitz who married the crown prince of Russia, bit off the pitma of an etrog on Hoshana Rabbah and recited the above supplication. Subsequently, she gave birth to a male child who became Frederick William IV, King of Prussia.^'

The above story accords with the belief among the masses in Eastern Europe that a pregnant woman who bit off the pitma would bear a male child. 157

These superstitions may have originated from a Talmudic legend: "One who eats an etrog will have fragrant children. The daughter of King Shapur, whose mother had eaten an etrog [while she was pregnant] with her, used to be presented before her father as his principal perfume.1

The attributes and symbolism of the apple in the folkloric traditions of France revolve around the theme of love. The ethrog with which Pissarro would be familiar shares much of this symbolism. This folk- symbolism corresponds with the implications and interpretations of the Biblical narrative of the Fall and its consequences, and Pissarro's choice of the subject,

Cueillette des pommes. The general character of this symbolism is shared with the other vegetables on the jardiniere, the potato and the cabbage.

Why did Pissarro select the harvest of these three to decorate the jardiniere and why did he present them in the way that he did? The general contextual symbolism of the jardiniere images and the punning relationships that exist because of the many meanings of that word and Julie

Pissarro as woman and jardiniere have been discussed.

All of these are related to the autumnal harvest and serve as a metaphorical image of women. The themes are procreation and fertility which are shared with the folk 158 traditions and beliefs concerning the individual fruit or vegetable.

The apple images of the Cueillette des pommes appear as the key to understanding the jardiniere. It is well understood that the French word for apple is pomme; for potato, pomme de ter re; and for cabbage, chou.

But, the variety of cabbage that Pissarro has represented is the chou pommel so named because of the round shape that is formed as the vegetable ripens. Pomme"is the past participle of the verb pommer, meaning to form into a round shape like an apple. It is in this way that the pomme, the pomme ,de terre and the chou p o m m e 'are related, not just through their symbolism. Pommer refers to the ripening process, to becoming round like an apple, and also to the increasing roundness of a woman in pregnancy.

The short poem above expresses this idea through an analogy of the ripening of the apples and of a woman passing through puberty. As such the harvest scenes of the jardiniere form a metaphor for woman with child.

The jardiniere Cueillette des pommes is a variation on the gathering of apples subjects discussed in the preceding chapter, and with which it also shares general compositional presentation. The narrative content of the

1882/1886 apple harvests is transposed to the jardiniere 159

through their shared imagery and compositional presentations, and becomes part of the total iconographic plan there expanded and elaborated upon.

The jardiniere Cueillette des pommes (fig. 32) consists of four figures. The trunk of the apple tree is placed to the right of the vertical axis of the composition. Curving towards the left as it rises, it is cut off at the top by the picture frame; thus, the trunk helps create a convex space on the left in which the central action of the gathering takes place. The single male figure carrying a basket in each hand is isolated in the space to the right of the tree trunk. A female figure stands in the left-hand space, facing towards the right and holding the sides of a ladder which extends beyond the upper edge of the painting into the branches of the apple tree. A second female figure bends at the waist and picks up the apples with her right hand while placing them in the basket on her left. A third figure stands at the top of the ladder, knocking apples from the tree. Pissarro has confined the action in a narrow foreground space. The distraction of spatial recession has been eliminated by placing a row of bushes and trees directly behind. 160

The jardiniere painting differs from both the 1881 and the 1882/1886 compositions in significant details.

The composition is oriented along a horizontal axis.

There is no male figure in the other paintings. The female figure holding the ladder repeats the pose of the woman holding the long thin stick, or qaule. In the jardiniere plaque, the c thering figure stands and bends at the waist in a variation of the ramasseuse pose. The medium of the jardiniere does not permit the representation of the seasonal and color nuances found in the other paintings. Neither has Pissarro chosen to represent the blasted tree of 1881 nor the grafted tree that he developed for the 1882/1886 paintings; and, there is no figure to represent the Eve of the Fall, who bites into the Forbidden Fruit.

However, the apple tree alludes to the Tree of

Knowledge which stood in the center of the Garden of

Eden, which Pissarro has symbolized by painting the garden of the Cueillette as a closed space. By this action, Pissarro has created a special place, a private place isolated from the rest of the world, a garden.

Pissarro's use of puns as a means of enhancing the latent content of a subject was discussed in the context of the jardiniere and pomme/pommer. To strengthen this 161 insight, one should know that this practice was extended to other members of his family in the affectionate nicknames given to certain of the Pissarro children.

Jeanne-Rachel (the first daughter by that name, 1865-

1874)^ was called Minette, which can refer to either a petit chatte^ or a jeune fille a la mode.51 Their second son, Felix (born 7 .2 4 .1 8 7 4 ) ,52 W as called

Titi, meaning a gamin de Paris.5® When Pissarro's second Jeanne was born on August 27, 1881,5^ she was nicknamed Cocotte, a term in children's lingo for chicken^ but, in adult parlance, meaning a woman of light morals.5®

This Cueillette des pommes appears to be an emblem of Camille Pissarro's mother, Rachel. She was born Rachel Manzana, and manzana is the Spanish word for "apple,” the fruit of the manzano, or "apple tree.The family began to translate this name into its French equivalent, pommier or Pomie^ for

Pissarro's mother was known as Rachel Manzana-Pomie^

(Petit-Pissarro). Ironically, Rachel lived in Paris on the rue Paradis, number 42.5® Thus, she can literally be understood as a pommier in "Paradise" - an apple tree in the Garden of Eden. In Jewish as in

Christian tradition, the Pissarro family would be 162 understood as descendants of Adam and Eve: the fruit of the womb of Rachel dit Manzana dit Pomie dit

"apple tree." The Talmud, Shabbath, Gemara 88a, compares the Israelites to the apple tree:

R. Hama, son of R. Hanima said: What is meant by, As the apple tree among the trees of wood, [So is my beloved among the sonsjl why were the Israelites compared to the apple tree? To teach you: just as the fruit of the apple tree preceeds its leaves, so did the Israelites give precedence to "we will do" and "we will harken."59

Pissarro continued his allusions to the Fall in the sarcleuses and the ramasseuses. These two subjects concern two of the curses imposed by God as a consequence of Adam and Eve's disobedience.

The following serves as background for understanding this. God's words to Adam and Eve are recorded in

Genesis 3:16-19; and in verse 18, He spoke to Adam:

"Thorns and thistles shall it grow for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field." Apparently it is these words which provided the basis for Pissarro's choice of the chou pomme and the pomme de terre to accompany the pomme; Jewish scholarship illuminates their meaning. In the Bible, the early stages of creation are described in

Genesis 1:11, 163

God said, :,Let the earth grow grass, seedbearing plants, and fruit trees bearing fruit of its own kind with its seed in it, on the earth. It was so."

This translation, from The Torah Anthology of Rabbi Culi, describes three types of vegetations: grass, seedbearing plants and fruit trees. [Other translations may describe only two kinds, distinguishing only between plants and trees, or leaving the question deliberately vague. See

Appendix B]

Three types of vegetation were created - vegetables, cereals, and fruit - which were for food. These three varieties were allotted to man and beast, the former receiving the fruits and cereals, and the beasts receiving the vegetables or herbs. In the dual system of

Ramban, the beasts were allotted the herbs, or grasses, while man received the seeds of the grasses and the fruit. As a result of his disobedience, Adam was condemned to eat the herbs, or grasses, the food formerly reserved for the beasts of the earth. The earth itself was cursed. Man must now toil for his food. Thorns and thistles will grow in the fields and must be removed or eaten in place of other food, and "by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread." Rabbi Culi comments on these curses: 164

5: If man had not sinned, the earth would have grown many beautiful things like those which grew in the Garden of Eden. Now, however, the ground was cursed because of Adam that only grass would grow; God told him, "You shall eat the grass of the field." When Adam heard this, his eyes brimmed with tears, and he said, "Master of the universe! Shall I now be like any other animal? Shall I eat out of the same manger as my cattle?" God then substituted the sixth curse. 6: This curse is, "By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread." Even though this set Adam's mind at ease, it is actually a worse curse than the earlier ones. A person would certainly prefer to be at ease and eat bread and salt, rather than have to work hard and eat roast pheasant. 0

Pissarro's selection of the pomme de terre and the

chou pomme reflects the curses of Adam. The pomme was

the instrument of the Fall, and this association is translated to the pomme de terre and the chou pomme* through etymological identification. The sexual nature of the Fall is analogous to folkloric traditions and

beliefs surrounding the pomme, the pomme de terre and the

chou pomme'. This sexual context is reinforced by the artistic and emblematic traditions which Pissarro designated. The consequences of the Fall condemned man to eat what had been reserved for animals, after taking away the fruits and the grains. Cereals were later restored, but now man must work for his food and eat his grain in the form of bread. The vegetables are the food of man through God's curse. Like the themes of the 165 sarcleuses, the ramasseuses and the femmes avec enfants that represent other curses, the vegetables are a logical choice for Pissarro. They are contrasted with the apple which as a fruit was food prior to the Fall. The apple becomes the "apple of the earth", the earth which was also cursed, and the "apple-like cabbage" grows close to earth in which man must toil for his food. They are like fallen apples.

This character of vegetables as food reinforces the theme of the ramasseuse that Pissarro incorporated in one of the female figures for the La cueillette des pommes series. The ramasseuse is the descendant of Eve, woman as laborer (gatherer of herbs and vegetation); woman as jardiniere gathers in the herbs and green vegetation which was henceforth man's food through God's curse, the produce of the earth which itself was cursed because of its disobedience.

The earth was further cursed because of its ro3e in the slaying of Abel by Cain, a situation discussed in

Genesis 4:2:

"... Abel became a shepherd, while Cain was a worker of the soil." which is explained:

Abel chose to become a shepherd, tending sheep. He saw that the soil had been cursed, as 166

we have discussed, and he separated himself from it.

After the slaying of Abel and after Cain had buried him

in the ground:

[God] said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is screaming to Me from the ground.* Now, cursed are you from the ground which opened its mouth to take your brother's blood from your hand." (Genesis 4:10-11)

Rabbi Culi explains:

Even the ground partook in this sin because it "opened its mouth" and swallowed Abel's blood. It may be perfectly natural for the earth to absorb blood, but a trace usually remains on the surface. In this case, the blood was absorbed so completely that no trace was visible.

In one way, the earth had done a good deed, since animals would not be able to lap up any of this blood. But since not even the slightest discoloration was left on the surface, it was a sign that the earth wanted to hide the blood completely, that it not be discovered. This was improper; nothing can be hidden from God. He therefore also included the ground in the curse.

In this way the earth became associated with death.

Thus, the narrative of the Fall provide the

infrastructure for the jardiniere scenes as well as the

La cueillette des pommes group of paintings. The scene of the Cueillette des pommes also became an emblematic portrait of Rachel "the apple tree" Manzana-Pomie,

Pissarro's mother, through the punning references to her name and her address in Paris. As the story developed 167 from the crisis in the Garden of Eden to the curses of

Adam and Eve conceived as naturalistic images of agricultural activity, so does Pissarro extend his use of

Biblical events to the jardiniere, depicting scenes that occur outside of Paradise. He will make further use of puns and family names in these images.

The Recolte des pommes de terre (Harvesting of

Potatoes; fig. 33) is one of the two smaller plaques that

Pissarro designed for the decoration of the jardiniere.

The scene takes place in a potato field in the foreground of the painting. Like the cabbage patch, the potato field occupies a large area of the picture plane, with a narrow middle ground at the top. A solid female figure seen from a rear three-quarters view stands in the immediate foreground. Shebends forward at the waist as she places a potato in her basket. Behind her stands a second female figure, bent slightly at the waist, with hands on her hips and arms akimbo. She is speaking to the woman gathering potatoes. A single male figure stands on the left, feet apart, with his hands on his hips, his arms akimbo, repeating the pose of the woman to his left. He appears to observe the interaction between the two women, psychologically and compositionally 168

isolated. His relative isolation is enhanced by the tree

at the left.

In the La recolte des pommes de terre (The Harvest

of Potatoes; fig. 58)^ of 1872, the potato field

contributes a unique color, texture, and pattern to the

whole composition of the painting. It was these

qualities which attracted Pissarro to the scene, without

concern for the traditional prejudices or questions of

appropriateness regarding subject matter. The same

subject, painted in 1874 at Montfoucault (fig. 59),®^

exhibits Pissarro's new interest in genre subjects. The

landscape and its qualities have been subordinated to the

harvesting activity itself and Pissarro's interest in depicting the variety of activities, poses, gestures, and

interactions of the individual figures. The landscape

forms a stage-like space for the potato harvest.

Pissarro has raised the horizon line almost to the top edge of the painting to eliminate the distraction of distance.

The figures receive even greater emphasis in the

gouache Recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of

Potatoes; fig. 60)65 painted in 1880. Sacks of potatoes establish the vertical axis of the composition. The

figures are confined to the right half of the painting 169 and are concentrated in the foreground. Several of these figures are truncated by the right edge of the painting and the lower right corner. Having thus truncated the

lower right figure in the 1881 Thinning Apple Blossoms, and in several other paintings, it seems to be characteristic of this general time period.

Pissarro developed a variation of the theme of the potato harvest within the general context of the subject.

He painted the Recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of

Potatoes; fig. 61)66 in 1882. This variant of the theme is distinct from the other conception discussed in the preceding paragraphs. The large central figure of the woman establishes the vertical axis of the composition and dominates the painting. She is virtually as tall as the vertical dimension of the painting and her figure is placed in the immediate foreground. Kneeling or bending women flank this central dominant figure. The horizon line is high, limiting distraction. The gesture of this figure as she adjusts her head-covering with the jutting elbows blocks the distant view and strengthens the foreground plane.

This same foreground compositional emphasis and pose was employed in Paysanne rattachant sa marmotte (Peasant

Woman Reattaching Her Marmotte; fig. 621882. This 170 painting, however, does not contain the reference to a potato harvest. When these two paintings are compared to

Paysannes dans les champs, Pontoise (Peasant Women in the Fields, Pontoise; fig. 63),1880, in which a female figure is shown in the same pose of adjusting her head covering, the new emphasis on the figure in Pissarro's art of the early 1880's becomes apparent. Now the figures are the subject of the painting. Landscape often becomes a background for the physical presence and actions of the figures. The relative roles of figure and landscape were reversed from earlier paintings.

A second image in this alternative conception of the potato harvest is an etching (fig. 64).®^ Leymarie and

Melot date this etching/aquatint, the seventh of seven states, to 1886, when it was exhibited in the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition. Loys Delteil has assigned it to 1880. Barbara Stern Shapiro has dated it to 1882, based upon the penciled signature, remark and date of

1882 written by Pissarro.7® The 1882 date makes it contemporary with Fig. 61 discussed above. Another proof of this etching, Paysanne attachant sa marmotte

(Peasant Woman Attaching Her Marmotte; fig. 65),71 was dated 1886 in the Pissarro-Venturi catalog and listed as 171

a pastel. Barbara Stern Shapiro clarifies this

description, for it is an etching overworked with pastel.

The composition of the etching is the same as the

1882 gouache: the large standing female figure adjusts her marmotte in the immediate foreground, a figure on either side bends or stoops to collect potatoes, and there is a distant view of Pontoise in the background.

The finely detailed landscape background made possible by the etching technique is countered by the bold outlines of the figure whose flat irregular shapes contrast boldly against the detailed townscape.

Paysanne en tableau bleu attachant sa marmotte dans un champ (Peasant Woman in Blue Attaching Her Marmotte in a Field; fig. 66)73 is a pastel drawing that is transitional between Fig. 62 and Fig. 61 and the pastel/ etching, Fig. 65. Pissarro has translated the pose to a landscape with high horizon. Two flanking figures are added to complete the basic composition.

Pissarro derived the two female figures in the

jardiniere Recolte des pommes de terre from other themes that he had developed. These two figures are found in

Marche aux pommes de terre, boulevard des Fosses,

Pontoise (Potato Market, Boulevard des Fosses, Pontoise; fig. 67),73 1882. The sack of potatoes replaces the basket in the jardiniere. The bending female figure dressed in her more elaborate market clothes has replaced the peasant in everyday field clothing. The figure standing with arms akimbo talking to the potato harvester has become a buyer of potatoes, dressed in marketing clothes with a basket in the crook of her left arm. The garden landscape has been replaced by the market cityscape. Pissarro has used a steeply tipped groundplane in both compositions.

These two figures form a motif that is repeated in several variations in other paintings of this same general time period. Paysanne et enfant dans les champs,

Pontoise (Peasant Woman and Child in the Fields,

Pontoise; fig. 68),^^ painted in 1881, contains two figures, a woman and a child, in the same general poses.

The child is on the left of the group slightly to the fore, in the same general relationship to the woman as the potato harvester from the jardiniere and the potato seller in the market scene. To the right and slightly to the rear stands the woman, hands on her hips in a pose of confrontation as she interacts with the other figure.

The two figures are set against a steeply rising ground

Pi ace with a horizon line above the head of the tallest figure, allowing only a narrow strip of sky to show at 173 the top. This composition is repeated in the Paysanne debout causant a un paysan agenouille (Peasant Woman above Talking to a Kneeling Peasant); fig. 69),^ circa

1882. The child is replaced by a kneeling male peasant whose body is truncated by the left edge of the picture.

The composition of the Recolte des pommes de terre is the nexus of a complex network of associations within

Pissarro's body of work. The sub-theme of the Paysanne rattachant sa marmotte group transmits an image derived from other sources. The pose of the dominant female figure with arms raised to her head is that of Aphrodite, and of Venus at her toilette. This sexual connotation parallels God's curses after the Fall in which a married woman is required to cover her head so that her hair will not show. Iconographic traditions bring to the subject of the potato harvest sexual implications that reinforce the folk beliefs and Biblical implications of this vegetable.

The motif of the two female figures forms a second sub-theme with roots in several subject areas. Paysanne debout causant... establishes the motif as one of confrontation, or an interaction of master and servant.

The idea of an authority figure and confrontation is also reflected in Paysanne et enfant. This is linked to the 174

Cueillette series through the woman and child theme. The two figures from the jardiniere are repeated almost exactly in the Marche aux pommes de terre.... The major differences are those necessary to the surrounding circumstances. The woman who gathers up the potatoes now sells them; she is in the role of the servant or child.

The figure with arms akimbo symbolically becomes the woman at the market who haggles over potatoes. Their relationship is one of buyer and seller.

Paysanne dans un champ de choux (Peasant Woman in a Cabbage Field; fig. 34) serves as a pendant to the

Recolte des pommes de terre in the decorative scheme of the jardiniere. The composition focuses on the standing female figure in the immediate foreground. The cabbage patch occupies the lower two-thirds of the picture plane and is succeeded by a middle ground contained by a fence.

Behind the woman and to the left of the central axis are two trees that rise from the cabbage patch to be cut off by the top edge of the picture frame. The motif of the two trees and the upper torso of the female figure are repeated in the upper right corner of the painting by the tree and the house. The woman wears a blouse and a skirt protected by an apron. Her head is covered by a scarf. 175

The subject of a cabbage field had been painted by

Pissarro in the 1873 Champs de choux, Pontoise

(Cabbage Fields, Pontoise; fig. 70), ^ but this earlier painting was conceived differently. The cabbages form only a small part of the whole landscape, while the small female figure merely indicates human presence in the landscape. The true subject is the whole landscape and how the parts contribute their special qualities of color, light and texture to the sensation of the entire landscape. The light-filled spaces and subtle variations of green are Pissarro's real concern.

Pissarro created several series of drawings and etchings entitled Femme dans un potager, or Woman in a

Kitchen Garden. One of these series consists of two preparatory pencil drawings and an etching of The Cabbage

Field and is dated circa 1880 (fig. 71-3).^ A cabbage field in the foreground covers three-quarters of the picture surface. In the middle ground a narrow field recedes to a high wall and large house beyond. Two trees to the right or left of the vertical axis connect the receding planes of the pictorial space.

The second series of compositions is that of the

Femme dans un potager, which is also dated circa 1880.

This is an etched composition which has three states. 176

The first state (fig. 74)78 is similar to that of

The Cabbage Field. The image is created entirely with lines and there is no human figure. The second state

(fig. 75)7^ and the third state (fig. 76)88 have added a robust female figure who bends over to harvest a cabbage.

The etched design has been reworked a great deal, and

Pissarro has developed the image through the supplementary use of aquatint and soft ground techniques.

The black crayon on blue paper drawing of Paysanne cueillant des choux (Peasant Woman Harvesting Cabbages; fig. 77)®^ was a study for the monotype of the Cabbage

Picker (fig. 78).®^ Viewed from above, the robust figure thrusts her right foot against the earth as she bends over to pick up a heavy head of cabbage while holding another head in her right hand. The arm of the hand which holds the already picked cabbage bends at the elbow; and the extended arm picking up the other head mirror the pose of the drawing. The figure in the monotype bends more at the knees and less at the waist, with her buttocks extended backwards for strength and balance, creating an image of more power and less grace.

The jardiniere Paysanne dans un champ de choux was developed within the context of this group of drawings and etchings. The general compositional elements of the 177 cabbage patch, middle ground and limited background, and the two groups of trees are repeated in each of the images. The female figure may have been developed independently, and then combined with the cabbage field landscape. Pissarro has developed the composition that he used for the jardiniere from the Cabbage Field or

Femme dans un potager series, or from a common source, extending the theme of the woman harvesting or ramasseuse.

Pissarro worked with the subject of cabbages in 1883 when he painted the large Triage de chou (Preparation of

Cabbage; fig. 79, 81 x 65 cm).®-* The large male figure seen from mid-thigh in three-quarters view occupies most of the right half of the composition. He intently prepares a cabbage while standing in front of a large pile of the vegetable. His pose and the wall of cabbage heads are also found in the tempera Trieurs de choux

(Preparers of Cabbage; fig. 80,)®^ which has been assigned a date of circa 1883. This scene takes place in a storage room with two female figures seated on the left side of the composition. This painting is painted in a more sketchy technique with less detail. A pencil drawing (fig. 81)®^ establishes the composition for the tempera painting. The woman in the light blouse has been 178 developed from Paysanne assisse epluchant un chou

(Seated Peasant Woman Plucking a Cabbage; fig. 82)®® a pastel dated circa 1880, which is itself a variation of

La femme au chou (The Woman and Cabbage; fig. 83).®^ In both of these pastels, as well as the pencil drawing and the tempera painting, this female figure wears her hair uncovered.

The combination of two females figures and a male figure recurs in another variation of the cabbage theme.

In these Trieurs de choux (Preparers of Cabbage; fig.

84®® and fig. 85®®), circa 1883, two female peasants in the foreground carry large cabbage heads as they walk towards the left edge of the composition. The male figure standing behind the second peasant on the right moves a large head of cabbage. The scene takes place outdoors in an area piled high with cabbages, in front of a building, perhaps the storage building seen in the circa 1883 Trieurs de choux (fig. 80). The doorway to the structure frames the two women, although it is only sketchily represented in Fig. 85. This sketchiness extends to the painting of the two trees and piles of cabbages which frame the three figures. The tree on the right has been eliminated in Fig. 84. 179

The group of images centering on cabbages seems to form a story about cabbages and their use for food. The individual subjects range from a field of ripe cabbage heads, to the picking of the ripe vegetable, and its storage for the winter in a small shed. This series of events in the propagation of cabbages was an annual event in the country, and one that the artist would have seen in the environs of Pontoise with Julie Pissarro as a participant. It was a natural series that was part of

Pissarro's experience.

Thus do the individual images of the jardiniere each belong to a much larger group of similar subjects in

Pissarro's oeuvre. Potential iconographic content derives both from this external connection, and through their juxtaposition on the jardiniere. 180

Notes to Chapter III

^ Paul Joanne, Dictionnaire geographique, s.v. Pontoise.

2 * • • ^ Emile Littre,,Dictionnaire de la langue francaise (1956), s.v. jardiniere. 3

3 Ibid.

4 Rosh Hoshanah, Mishnah 10a, Seder MoEd, translated by Maurice Simon, in The Babylonian Talmud, edited by Dr. Isidore Epstein (London: The Soncino Press, 1938) [p. 37].

3 Abraham P. Block, The Biblical and Historical Background of Jewish Customs and Ceremonies (New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1980), p. 182.

® Theodore H. Gaster, "The Feast of Booths: The Festival of Ingathering," Festivals of the Jewish Year (1953), p. 80. 7 Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated in 2 volumes by Shloma Pines (Chicago: The University Chicago Press, 1963), Book III, Section 43, pp. 570-572. Based on the Arabic text established by S. Munk in Le guide des egares, trait£ de th^ologie et de philosophie par Molse Ben Maimouve dit Ma'imonide, translated by S. Munk (1856; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuvre, 1960).

3 See Chapter II, note 12.

^ Crispin Du Pas, Elle est tom bed j'ai vu son... (She Has Fallen, I Saw Her...), 17th C. Engraving. (Flandrin, Les amours paysannes, fig. 26).

Berakoth 61a, Seder Zera'im,. translated by Maurice Simon, in The Babylonian Talmud (1948), p. 383.

1 *1 Paul Sebillot, La faune et la flore, volume 3 in Le folk-lore de France, 4 volumes (1906; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1968), pp. 515-516. 181

"Les choux sont frequemment associes aux coutumes matrimoniales. Dans le Castrais, les jeunes gens les derobent poure en faire une soupe qui est servie aux marines dans la courant de la soiree; s'ils n'£taient pas vol^s, ce serait manquer a l'usage; dans la Creuse, la poule qui a promenee partout est assonm^e le soir avec un chou; le chou et la poule cuits ensemble sont partes aux £poux quand ils sont au lit. En Maine-et-Loire, des le matin, le lendemain de marriage, on attelait tous les boeufs de la metairie k la meilleure charrette et toute la compagnie se rendait dans un champ de choux; on choisissait le plus beau, puis on ouvrait une tranchee circulaire k une certaine distance et l'on s'en approchait avec un grand air de travail et de peine. Lorsque le chou est dechausee, chaque homme de la noce essayait de l'arracher avec des efforts simul^s, et bien entendu, n'en pouvait venir k bout. Cet honeur ■£tait reserve au mari'C, qui aprks avoir feint une grande peine, parvenait £ l'arracher; on s'aimait de levais et de cordes, et on parvenait a le placer sur la ch^rette et il "etait porte en triomphe au logis ou les femmes s'en emparaient. En Berry, la plantation du chou, symbole de la f^condite, k lieu le second ou le troisikme jour du mariage." y Sebillot, Le ciel et la terre, volume 1 in Le folk-lore de France (1904; rpt. 1968), p. 41.

"Les antiques superstitions relatives a1 l'action des astres sur la destinee sont encores vivantes chez les paysans. C'est surtout k la lune qu'ils accordent un veritable pouvoir, et elle l'exerce parfait bien avant la naissance. Cette croyance a relev^e sur deux points de la Basse-Bretagne: une jeune fille ou une jeune femme qui soit le soir pour uriner, ne doit jamais se tourner vers la lune quand elle satisfait et ce besoin, surtout si la lune est comme, c'est-a-dire dans ses premiers quartiers ou dans la decours; elle s'expose k #tre loaret ou lun€e, autrement dit k concevoir par la vertu de la lune. On cite des exemples de jeunes femmes ou de jeunes filles qui ont mis au monde 182

des fils de la lune, et que pour cette raison on appelle loares, lunatiques. Aux environs de Morlaix, celles qui, sortant en pareil cas lorsque la lune brille, a l'impudence de se decouvrir trop, "etant tournee vers l'astre, court risque de concevoir sous son influence et de donner le jour et" un “^tre monstrueux."

Eugene Rolland, "Brassica Oleracea (Linne). (Var. Capitata). Le chou," in Volume 2 of Flore populaire ou histoire naturelle des plantes dans leurs rapports avec la linguistique et le folklore (rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967), no. 90.

”11 a ete trouve" sous un chou; se dit d'un homme dont la naissance est inconnue."

14 Ibid.

"Phebus ne fut jamais ton pere; Ne vois-tu pas bien que ta m^re T'en donne a garder, pauvre fou? On t'a trouve dessous un chou, Et tu veux tirer ta naissance D'une divine quintessence..."

^ Sebillot, La faune et la flore, p. 474.

"A peu pres dans toute la France, on raconte aux enfants qu'on les a trouves sous un chou, et quelquefois les parents, en leur parlant d'une epoque anterieure a- leur naissance, ajoutent que c'etait du temps ou ils £taient encore dans les choux. Au XVIIIe si^cle, on disait d'une homme dont la naissance etait inconnue, qu'il avait ^te trouve" sous un chou, et un poi&te du XVe si^cle parle d'un personnage qui se tarque de sa naissance:

Combien qu'il soit sailly d'un trou. Voire, ou de la ligne d'qn chou Enfant a quelque jardiniere.

On dit quelquefois que ce sont les gargons que l'on cueille sous les choux.... Un grand nombres d'enseignes de sages-femmes, mtme et Paris, 183

representent une dame recueillant un enfant au milieu de choux."

Rolland, No. 21.

"Et que c'estoit un malin drille Apres avoir fait d'une fille Comme des choux de son jardin, De l'abandonner au dedain."

17 Ibid, No. 52.

"Juin, juillet, aout, Ni femme, ni chou." 1 ft Arnold van Gennep, "Cycle de mai," Part 2 of Ceremonies pt»riodiques cycliques, Section 4 of Volume 1, Manuel de folklore francais contemporain (Paris: Editions A. et J. Picafa et Cie, 1949), p. 1567.

"...dans la Vendee, en general, la fil^le sotte trouve un soleil, celle de conduite legere une branche de sureau ou un enorme chou...lf

1® Sebillot, La faune et la flore, p. 518.

"Le chou a d'ordinaire une signification disgracieuse: Dans la Suisse romande, planter le chou ^ quelqu'un, c'est lui faire un mauvais compliment. Dans beaucoup de pays le chou est attache^, le ler mai, ^ la porte des jeunes filles dont la conduite a 4t€ legere. En Basse- Bretagne un tronc de chou plac€ sur la porte indiquait au bazvalan que la proposition de mariages Ctait refusee. Dans les Landes, si lors d'une demande, l'un des parents pr^sente au jeune homme une gousse d'ail sur une assiette, il n'y a plus qu'a* se retirer."

2^ Redcliff N. Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridqe: The Unversitv Press, 1949), p. 104.

2* Ibid, p. 105. From R. W. T. Gunther, Early British Botanists (Oxford, 1922), p. 75.

22 Ibid, p. 105. 184

23 Ibid, pp. 106-107.

2^ Ibid, p. 105. Quoted from G. Bidault, Histoire des legumes (Paris: Librairie horticole, 1912), p. 242.

23 Eugene Rolland, "Solanum Tuberosum (Linrie). - La pomme de terre," in Volume 8 of Flore populaire ou histoire naturelle des plantes dans leurs rapports avec la linquistique et le folklore (rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Lorose, 1967), p. 111.

"La vitelotte est ainsi appel^e a1 cause de sa forme pha^ique; on en fait present avec d'autres legumes, a* la marine, le jour de ses noces."

26 Ibid.

"Des pelures de pommes de terre, plac^e le ler mai, devant la porte d'une fille, symbolisent le mepris qu'on a pour elle."

2^ Gennep, p. 1565.

2® H. Gaidoz, in "Additions et corrections," Rolland, Volume 8, p. 210. Cited from Lestrelin, Les paysans russes, 1861, p. 137.

"Le clerge russe, imbu de ses vieilles id£es retrogrades, anathemise les pommes de terre a leur apparition sur le sol de la Russie; il pr'etendait que c'^tait une nourriture impure, bonne pour les pourceaux et les Allemands qui les apportaient de leur pays. Enfin, en pleine chaire, il a % t /e dit, danp les £glises du rite grec, que c'etait un p£che de manger des pommes de terre."

2^ Eugene Rolland, "Pyrus Malus Sativa. (Linn^). - Le pommier," in Volume 5 of Flore populaire ou histoire naturelle des plants, No. 70.

"Un jour, le c^lebre Du Fouilloux voulut s^duire une bergere, au moyen d'un philtre qui n'^tait autre chose au'une pomme rouge. Mais une truie l'ayant mangee poursuivit de ses ardeurs amoureuses le malheureux cynegfetique." 185

30 Sebillot, La faune et la flore, p. 433.

"Une reine qui n'avait pas d'enfant, coup£ en quatre une pomme dont le diable deguise lui avait fait present; elle en donne un morceau ^ son mari, mange les trois autres et devient mere d'une petite fille..."

31 Rolland, "Pyrus Mulus Sativa," No. 33.

"Fille de roy, adieu ton pucelaige! Et toutes fois tu n'en doibs faire pleurs Car le pommier qui porte bien fruitage Vault mieux que oil qui ne porte que fleurs."

32 Ibid, No. 45.

"Les amoureux ne s'embrassent pas, ils se sucent la pomme."

33 ibid, No. 70.

"Manger la pomme - faire l'amour."

34 sebillot, La faune et la flore, p. 392.

"it l'^poque de la Renaissance, ceux qui ^ voulaient par mariage contraindre les femmes a leur amour se servaient d'une pomme qu'ils leur donnaient manger."

33 ibid, p. 400.

"La pomme sert, dans quelques communes du pays de Redon, it une sorte de communion amoureuse, celui qui va demander en mariage une fille qu'il conna^t depuis son enfance, a soin de se munir d'une pomme, et quand il se trouve avec elle, il y mord en disant: M'aimes-tu? m'aimes-tu pas? Si tu m'aimes, mords dans mon mais! Si la fille accepte, le mariage est decide; si elle refuse, tout est rompu. Lors de la demande en mariage, des fruits servent, sans qu'il soit necessaire de parler, a faire conna^tre comment elle sera accueillie..." 186

36 John A. Philips, Eve: The History of an Idea (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984), pp. 6 8 - 69.

3^ Rolland, "Pyrus Malus Sativa," No. 43.

"Etre coiffee en cueilleux de pommes = avoir sa coiffure sur la derri^re de la t£te."

33 Ibid, No. 46.

"Pommettes = seins de la femme."

39 Ibid, No. 22.

"Les filles et les pommes Est une mesme chose."

49 Ibid, No. 48.

"Si femme savait que vaut pomme Jamais n'en donnerait a homme."

4^ Ibid, No. 71.

"Au premier mai, le rameau de pommier plante~ devant la maison d'une jeune fille indique symboliquement qu'elle boit."

42 Ibid.

"Placer une branche de pommiers le ler mai devant la fen^tre d'une fille, c'est lui dire qu'elle a le temperament amoureux."

43 Ibid, p. 98.

"On appelle pomme-poire une fille de moeurs l^geres dont on ne sait si elle est fille, femme ou veuve.:

44 The Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. etroq.

4^ Eugene Rolland, "Citrus Medica, in Volume 4, Flore populaire ou histoire naturelle des plantes (1896; Rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967), p. 3. 187

4® S. D. Gotein, A Mediterranean Society, Volume 1 in Economic Foundations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, p. 121, cited in Philip Goodman, The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 5733/1973), p. 335.

47 Yom Tov Lewinski, Sefer-a-Moadim..., Volume 4 of Sukkot (Tel Aviv: Onez Shabbat Society and Dvir, 1951), p. 95, cited in Goodman, p. 335.

4® Menahot 27a, in Goodman, pp. 336-336.

49 Dates and other biographical information about the Pissarros have been taken from Janine Bailly-Herzerg, "Introduction," and "Chronologies," in Pissarro, Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, edited by J. B.-H. (Paris: Presses Univeritaires de France, 1980), pp. 11-20, and 20-54.

5® Emile Littre, Dictionnaire, s.v. minette.

Nouvelle petit Larousse (1971), s.v. minette.

52 Bailly-Herzberg, ibid.

55 Nouvelle petit Larousse, s.v. titi.

54 j. Bailly-Herzberg, ibid.

55 Nouvelle petit Larousse, s.v. cocotte.

56 Ibid.

57 Real Academia Espanola, Diccionario de la langua espanola (1956), s.v. manzana and manzano.

5® Pissarro (to Monet), Paris, 9 October 1884, Correspondance, no. 252 and note 4.

5® Gemara 8 8 a, Shabbath, translated by Dr. H. Freedman in 2 volumes, Vol. 2, pp. 418-419, Seder Mo eb, The Babylonian Talmud, part 2, Volumes 1-2, edited by Dr. I. Epstein (London: The Soncino Press, 1938). 188

60 Rabbi Yaakov Culi, in Genesis 3:18, Bereshith 10, Book One. Beginnings. From Creation until Abraham, from The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (New York: Maznaim Publishing Corporation, 1977), [p. 276].

6 * Culi, in Genesis 4:2, Bereshith 12, Book One, from The Torah Anthology, [p. 286].

62 ibid, Genesis 10:11, [p. 293-294].

62 La recolte des pommes de terre (The Harvest of Potatoes). 1872. P&V 166, 43 x 54 cm., 16.9 x 21.3 in., oil on canvas.

64 La recolte des pommes de terre. 1874. P&V 295, 33 x 41 cm., 13.0 x 16.1 in., oil on canvas.

62 La recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of Potatoes). 1880. P&V 1338, 27 x 49 cm.., 10.6 x 19.3 in., gouache.

66 La recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of Potatoes). 1882. P&V 1369, 30 x 22 cm., 11.8 x 8.7 in., gouache.

67 Paysanne rattachant sa marmotte (Peasant Woman Reattaching Her Marmotte). 1882. P&V 1370, 56 x 36 cm., 22.1 x 14.2 in., gouache.

6 ® Paysannes dans les champs, Pontoise (Peasant Women in the Fields, Pontoise). 1880. P&V 515, 46 x 65 cm., 18.11 x 25.59 in., oil on canvas.

6 ® La recolte des pommes de terre a Pontoise (The Potato Harvest at Pontoise). 1882. 28 x 22 cm., 11 x 8-5/8 in., Etching and aquatint on copper, seventh state, on buff laid paper. (Boston, Pissarro, cat no. 178).

7® Barbara Stern Shapiro, "Pissarro as a Print- Maker," in Boston. Museum of Fine Arts, Pissarro (1980), cato no. 178.

72 Paysanne attachant sa marmotte (Peasant Woman Attaching Her Marmotte). Circa 1886. P&V 1573, 27 x 21 cm., 10.6 x 8.3 in., pastel on etching. 189

^ Paysanne en tablier bleu attachant sa marmotte, dans un champ (Peasant Woman in Blue Attaching Her Marmotte/ in a Field). Circa 1882-83. P&V 1562/ 55 x 44 cm., 21.7 x 17.3 in., pastel.

7 ^ ^ 'J Marche aux pommes de terre, boulevard des Fosses, Pontoise (Potato Market, Boulevard des Fosses, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 1365, 26 x 20 cm., 10.2 x 7.9 in., gouache.

^ Paysanne et enfant dans les champs, Pontoise (Peasant Woman and Child in the Fields, Pontoise). 1881. P&V 552, 41 x 27 cm., 16.1 x 10.6 in., oil on canvas.

^ Paysanne debout causant a un paysan aqenouill^ (Peasant Woman above Talking to a Kneeling Peasant). Circa 1882. P&V 1371, 24 x 16 cm., 9.5 x 6.3 in., gouache.

Champs de choux, Pontoise (Cabbage Fields, Pontoise). 1873. P&V 230, 60 x 81 cm., 23.6 x 31.9 in., oil on canvas.

^ Le Champ de choux (The Cabbage Field). Circa 1880. Delteil 29, softground etching. (Boston, Pissarro, 1981, fig. 7).

The Cabbage Field. Circa 1880. Pencil with softground on verso. (Boston, fig. 8 ).

The Cabbage Field. Circa 1880. Pencil with softground on verso. (Boston, fig. 9).

These works are discussed under catalog entry no. 171- 172, in Boston, Pissarro (1981). The two pencil drawings are preparatory studies for the etching.

Femme dans un potaqer (Woman in a Kitchen Garden). Circa 1880. Delteil 30, First state, 24.8 x 16.9 cm., 9.75 x 6.625 in., etching on zinc. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 171).

^ Femme dans un potaqer (Woman in a Kitchen Garden). Circa 1880. Delteil 30, Second state, 24.8 x 16.9 cm., 9.75 x 6.625 in., etching on zinc. (Leymarie and Melot, Graphic Works of the Impressionists, cat. no. P30). 190

88 Femme dans un potaqer (Woman in a Kitchen Garden). Circa 1880. Delteil 30, Third state, 24.8 x 16.9 cm., 9.75 x 6.625 in., etching on zinc. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 172).

8^ Paysanne cueillant des choux (Peasant Woman Harvesting C a b b a g e s ). N.D. 21.5 x 14.5 cm., 8.5 x 5.75 in., black crayon on blue paper. (Sotheby, Impressionist and Modern Painting, Part II, Thursday, July 4, 1974, Cat. no. 341).

Cabbage Picker, N.D., Monotype. (Artist1s Proof, Vol. 8 , 1968, p. 52).

88 Triage de chou (Preparation of Cabbage). 1883. P&V 617, 81 x 65 cm., 31.9 x 25.6 in., oil on canvas.

8^ Trieurs de choux (Preparers of Cabbage). Circa 1883. P&V 1381, 64 x 48 cm., 25.2 x 18.9 in., tempera.

88 Trieurs de choux (Preparers of Cabbages). Circa 1883. 23.5 x 17 cm., 9.25 x 6.75 in., pencil, (Parke- Bernet, N.Y., Important Impressionist and 20th Century Drawings, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 197 0, Tp^ 12].

88 Paysanne assisse epluchant un chou (Seated Peasant Woman Plucking a Cabbage). Circa 1880. P&V 1546, pastel.

8^ La femme au chou (The Woman and Cabbage). Circa 1880. P&V 1547, 46 x 40 cm., 18.1 x 15.8 in., pastel.

88 Paysannes triant des choux (Peasants Preparing Cabbage). Circa 1883. P&V 1382, 30 x 24 cm., 11.8 x 9.5 in., not specified.

88 Paysannes et paysan triant des choux (Peasant Women and Peasant Preparing Cabbage). Circa 1883. P&V 1383, 34 x 30 cm., 13.4 x 11.8 in., gouache, crayon and Chinese ink. CHAPTER IV

THE JARDINIERE - AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INSIGHT

Camille Pissarro has created a complex allegory with the four compositions of the jardiniere whose themes center on the ideas of fertility and abundance and con­ tain many layers of symbolism. Pissarro has created an elaborate and involved biographical allegory through punning associations of his and his family's names. The jardinieire is a metaphor for woman, and a symbolic per­ sonification of the harvest and the annual celebration of the harvest. It is a symbolic character that infuses all the images and the sources from which they were formed.

The correspondence between the religious symbolism of the apple-tree and Pissarro's mother, Rachel Pissarro, suggests that further associations might exist concerning the names of other members of the Pissarro household. In developing this idea, it was found that the Biblical narratives about the namesakes of Jacob-Abraham—Camille

Pissarro, i.e., Jacob and Abraham, contain relationships and incidents involving the individual characters that parallel those of the Pissarros. These relevant Biblical

191 192 accounts also contain references to objects and social events corresponding with folk traditions mentioned previously. Thus is revealed a close association of the four scenes with the most intimate details of Pissarro's life, also reflected in the fact that the jardiniere remained in the private possession of the Pissarro family until Julie Pissarro's death. This correspondence will be examined in the following pages.

Camille Pissarro was formally named Jacob Abraham

Camille Pissarro and the names of Jacob and Abraham are the keys to the iconography of the two plagues depicting potatoes and cabbages much as (Rachel) Manzana-Pomie was allegorized in the Cueillette des pommes. The specific stories embody the themes of sex, fertility and the harvest that are the bases of the previously developed interpretations. The individual characters of the stories and the nature of their interaction will correspond with the visual networks that Pissarro developed in the thematic groups of images in his oeuvre.

An incident in the story of Jacob and Rachel is the basis for the composition of the Recolte des pommes des terre. Rachel and Leah were the daughters of Laban.

Jacob fell in love with Rachel and asked Laban's permission to marry her. Laban agreed. But at the time 193 of the wedding, Laban substituted Leah because she was older. Jacob married Leah instead of Rachel. Later, he married Rachel. God saw that Leah was unloved. Leah had three sons and Rachel was jealous of her. When Rachel told Jacob to give her children, he became angry with her because it was God who had made her barren. Rachel gave

Jacob her handmaid Bilhah who bore a son for Rachel.

Bilhah bore a second son. Leah gave her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, who gave him two sons. Then:

Reuben went [out] in the days of the wheat harvest, and he found love-flowers in the field. He brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, "Give me some of your son's love- flowers.*" [Leah] said to her, "Isn't it enough that you took my husband's [love]? You would also take my son's love-flowers?" Rachel said, "All right. He will sleep with you tonight in exchange for your son's love-flowers.*" Jacob came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him. She said, "You will come to me. I have hired you with my son's love-flowers." He slept with her that night. (Gen. 30:14-16)

Leah bore Jacob two more sons. Leah then gave Jacob a daughter named Dinah. God made Rachel pregnant twice with Joseph and Benjamin.

The standing female represents Rachel, in a position of authority because she was the beloved of Jacob. Leah gathers up the potatoes. Rachel stands with arms akimbo in confrontation with Leah as she demands the "love- flowers." Rachel purchases the aphrodisiac "love- 194 flowers" from Leah by giving Jacob to her for the night.

This is the relationship established in the market version of the two women motif.

"Love-flowers" is a non-specific translation of the

Hebrew word dudaim:

Some say that this is jasmine. It has a very pleasant fragrance. According to others, it is [the mandrake]. The root of the plant looks like a human being with hands and feet. It is said to promote fertility, and it is even used by some physicians. It has globular berries. Some roots look like men and others appear like women.1

The ability to induce fertility attributed to the mandrake is found in French tradition:

The mandrake renders women fecund. One day a whore asked the mandrake to make her fecund, but the plant refused; ^

and,

The mandrake signifies a generative conjunction.

This attribute is one that is shared with the potato or pomme de terre. The mandrake belongs to the solanee family of plants which includes, in addition to the mandragora, the tomato or pomme d 1amour, and the solanum tuberosum or potato. A Spanish writer reports that the mandrake had the Latin name of malum terrae, or apple of the earth, the name which in its French translation is the pomme de terre or potato.^ Thus the 195 potato is the metaphorical equivalent of the mandrake, which functions as the Biblical "love-flower" in

Pissarro's representation of the scene.

Pissarro continues to use the story of his namesake

Jacob in the scene of the Paysanne dans un champ de choux. The standing female figure with a slightly bulging abdomen is pregnant, which accords with the general symbolic organization of the jardiniere. This situation is complemented by the fact that her hair is covered with a scarf, the symbol that Pissarro used to differentiate between a girl and a woman. The woman would be Leah who became pregnant after sleeping with

Jacob that night.

Leah had given Jacob a daughter who was named Dinah

(Gen. 20:21). Dinah was involved in an incident that is related in Genesis 34: Dinah went out visiting with some of the local girls:

Leah's daughter Dinah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to visit some of the local girls.* Shechem, son of the chief of the region, Chamor the Hittite, saw [Dinah]. He took her, slept with her, and mistreated her.* He became deeply attached to Jacob's daughter Dinah, and he fell in love with the girl. He spoke to the girl's heart. (Gen. 34:1-3)

Dinah had been taken by force and raped as the result of her behavior of going to town where she could 196 be seen and could excite lust in a male. She became pregnant and had a daughter named Asenath. There was a problem with how to handle the situation. Dinah's brothers decided to kill Shechem and his father and all the males of the town through a deception. When Jacob complained to the brothers, "They replied, 'Should he then have been allowed to treat our sister like a harlot?'" (Gen. 34:31)

Simeon and Levi defended themselves and said, "It is not right that people say, 'An uncircumcised idol worshipper defiled Jacob's daughter?' Should Shechem laugh at us and boast that he treated our sister like a whore..."

Their statement, "Should he make our sister into a harlot?" can also be understood in a legal sense. According to the Seven Universal Commandments, a woman is only considered married when she goes by her husband's name. If such a woman commits adultery, she and her lover incur the death penalty. As long as people refer to her as her father's daughter, she is not considered married. [If she lives with a man, her status is that of a harlot. Dinah was still known as her father's daughter...] The brothers argued and said, "Do you want our sister to have the legal status of a common whose? We had no choice but to kill them. If we had remained silent, people would have said that our sister is a whore and anyone who wants can make use of her services. If she were a married woman, would we do nothing? We had to kill them so that people would not say our sister is a whore. " 5

The Paysanne dans un champ de choux is a representation of Leah, and of Dinah who has become 197

pregnant from Shechem. The woman is pregnant, as Julie

Vellay became when she went to town to work for the

Pissarro's. The Torah and its exegesis compares the two

women:

Although it may seem redundant, the Torah stresses that Dinah was Leah's daughter. To some extent, it was Leah's fault. As we saw in Va Yetze (30:16), Leah found it very easy to go out I to meet Jacob in the field]. Dinah took after her, and walked the streets to explore the city.

Through the event that Pissarro portrayed in the Recolte

des pommes de terre, the stories of Jacob and Leah/Rachel

and of Dinah are interfaced:

But just because she [Dinah] "went out" she is called Leah's daughter, since she, too, was fond of "going out" (Gen R.80), as it is said (XXX.16) "and Leah went out to meet him." With an allusion to her they formulated the proverb: "Like mother, like daughter."7

The identification of this figure with Dinah agrees with the folk traditions surrounding the chou pomme"and

its associations with fertility and misbehavior. She is the chou pomme", the pregnant woman. She is the courtesan or woman of questionable reputation who finds her child under the cabbage, the bastard daughter of Shechem, the

situation which caused so much consternation for her brothers. The La foire de la Saint-Martin a Pontoise (fig. 35) as a representation of the city of Shechem forms an essential part of the Dinah narrative. Unlike the other scenes of the jardiniere, this painting does not represent people directly involved in agricultural activities. Pissarro has portrayed a general view of the fair with a large townscape of Pontoise forming the background. The clock tower that is part of the west facade of Saint-Maclou forms the vertical axis of the composition. The left half is filled with a field in the foreground and the town of Pontoise in the middle distance; a small cluster of barren trees and a small building stand at the left edge of the painting. A small group of milling people and horses occupy the right half of the foreground, contrasting with the relative barrenness of the field on the left. The emptiness of space as the town slopes down to the Oise River contrasts with the busyness of the town on the left. Pissarro has connected the middle and foregrounds as people travel along the road lying on the vertical axis.

The earlier composition of the fair made in 1872, La foire de la Saint-Martin, Pontoise (The Fair of Saint-

Martin, Pontoise; fig. 8 6 ) , 8 demonsrates Pissarro's interest in the general character of the scene. The 199 crowds and tents of the fair are placed in a composition controlled by the group of tall trees at the right and the broad foreground plane of the field. The strong diagonal of the road extending from the lower right corner into the middle distance provides the physical and visual means of going to the fair. Pissarro used this painting or the preparatory studies for it as the basis for a lithograph which he made in 1874 (fig. 87).^ The fair is seen from a closer viewpoint which has also moved to the right. The diagonal of the road is less emphatic.

The number of trees at the right has been reduced to two, the two on the left of the group in the painting that include the twice-bent tree. Pissarro shows more interest in the fair and its visitors than was evident in the 1872 painting.

In two other representations of the fair of Saint-

Martin's at Pontoise, an etching made in 1879 (fig. 8 8 )^® and a fan in 1881 (fig. 89 ), ^ Pissarro has moved the viewpoint even closer to the fair so that the observer stands in the midst of the crowd itself. The human activity occasioned by the fair is Pissarro's true interest, a prelude to the market scenes of the 1880's.

When Pissarro painted the gouache MarcheT aux chevaux, foire de la Saint-Martin, Pontoise (Horse Market, Fair of Saint-Martin, Pontoise; fig. 90),12 he focused on a specific event of the fair. The scene is viewed from ground level in the middle of the crowds.

The town of Pontoise viewed from the south forms the setting, rather than fields, tents, and booths. Pissarro has incorporated this view of Pontoise in the jardiniere, the view of the southern flank of Saint-Maclou with its west facade clock tower, and the town as it slopes downward from the plateau on which the church is built to the banks of the Oise. A major change is the angle from which Pontoise is seen. In the Marche" aux chevaux the church of Saint-Maclou is seen from below, from the plains of the Viosne valley to the south of Pontoise.

The view in the jardiniere composition is level with the church and the central plateau of the town, from the

Champ-de-Saint-Martin where the fair is held, above the banks of the Viosne River.

The jardiniere composition was developed from a vantage point that is different from the earlier ones, and that difference is significant to the story of Dinah.

Pissarro has chosen a point of view from the site of the fair itself on the Champ-de-Saint-Martin looking north to the town of Pontoise on the other side of the Viosne 201

River valley. It is said in Va Yishlach 2, Genesis

33:18-19:

Jacob arrived safely in the city of Shechem in the land of Cannaan when he came from Padam Aram. He set up camp in view of the city.* He bought the piece of open land upon which he pitched his tent from the sons of Chamor, father of Shechem, for one hundred kesitahs.

Pissarro has used the site of the fair of Saint-

Martin' s to represent Jacob's camp and land; and the fair

itself is like Jacob who:

... set up a market place and sold merchandise cheaply. Since he had derived enjoyment from the city, he wanted to benefit its people. 3

These are the fields from whence Dinah went into the city of Shechem, the city of Pontoise.

The Saint-Martin's Day Fair was the time of a great coming together of people. The fair at Pontoise had been f described in one account as "la plus considerable et la plus curieuses des environs de Paris,a distinction that has ominous implications when one considers the traditions surrounding this annual event. In his engraving of La foire de Saint Martin at Pontoise published in 1862, Gustave Dore has not chosen the spacious vista of Pissarro, selecting instead an activity characteristic of the fair. It was a time for lusty fun and celebration: 202

... from Saint-Martin to Christmas has been instituted a period of fasting, called Little- Lent, the observance of which has the aspect of a kind of subdued Carnaval, with stuffed meats and wines, songs and dances, that which is called martiner, and to which even Rabelais still made allusion, even though the Little-Lent had been abolished in the 13th century. This liturgical invention thus rendered lawful to some degree the festivity which existed prior and justified more or less the devolved sponsorship of this saint, in order to drink only water, inebriates and drunks, popular patronage which had often roused the horror of the people of the church. From drunkenness to erotic pleasures, it is not far, neither to adult; from whence in some places the attribution to the saint of the patronage of cuckolded husbands. 5

Eating, drinking, singing, and dancing are all contained within the verb martiner which was coined to described.the Saint-Martin's Day activities.

Inebriation, drunkenness, erotic pleasures, and adultery were part of the celebration in honor of this saint who was sometimes regarded as the patron saint of cuckolds.

But the fair was more than the time for licentious debauchery. It was the occasion of:

... the date of the rental of farm domestiques or their departure for other pations, some for an entire year, some only to Saint John's day in the following year, without special rites which place especially the social change under the protective aegis of Saint [Martin]. 6

The peasant girl who goes to town on Saint-Martin's

Day to find employment for the following year often 203 becomes involved in the other activities. ^ For the fair was an occasion for young men and women to meet and establish relationships that would lead to marriage. It was an occasion for indulging in sensual pleasures, for sexual intercourse was a regular part of life, and premarital pregnancies were not uncommon. Pregnancy was even used as a test of woman's ability to have children prior to marriage. This was the situation of Dinah, who became pregnant after going to town.

Pissarro skillfully combined many traditions to create this allegorical portrait based upon the life of his namesake, Jacob. The careful choice of specific scenes allowed him to extend this allegorical portrait to his other name of Abraham. The Abraham-based iconography is derived from i:he story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, which is related in Lekh Lekha 5, Genesis 16:1-7:

Abram's wife Sarai had not born him any, children. She had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar.* Sarai said to Abram, "God has restrained me from having children. Marry my maid; and perhaps I will have sons from her." Abram heeded to what Sarai said.* Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian her maid after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan for ten years. She gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.* [Abram] married Hagar and she became pregnant. When she realized that she was pregnant, she looked upon her mistress with contempt.* Sarai said to Abram, "This outrage against me is your fault. I myself placed my maid in your lap. Now that she sees herself 204

pregnant, she looks upon me with disrespect. Let God judge between you and me."* Abram said to Sarai, "Your maid is in your hands. Do with her as you see fit." Sarai abused her, and [Hagar] ran away from her. An angel of God found her by the spring in the desert. [It was] by the spring on the way to Shur.

The male figure in the Recolte des pommes de terre is Abram, the standing female is the angry Sarai. She has just vented her wrath upon Jacob, and now abuses the bending Hagar. This corresponds with the master, or mistress, and servant theme of the motif of the two women. The pregnant Hagar stands in the middle of the cabbage patch.

It is taught that after Abraham drove Hagar away, she reverted to the immoral ways of her people. She later repented, however, and changed her name. She avoided sexual immorality and did not defile herself with any man. °

After the death of Sarah, "Abraham once again married a woman. Her name was Keturah." Genesis 25:1.

The iconography of these three compositions establishes narrative relationships among the three scenes and the individual figures within those scenes.

These relationships also represent an autobiographical allegory of the life of Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro and Julie Vellay Pissarro. It is the story of their life together. In the beginning, Rachel "the apple tree"

Manzana-Pomie lived in Paradise. Julie Vellay entered 205 the Pissarro household as Rachel Pissarro's servant.

This is the relationship represented in the Recolte des pommes de terre. Jacob Abraham Camille stands at the left. Rachel-Sarai Rachel stands confronting the bending figure of Leah-Hagar (Keturah) Julie, the jealous woman involved in the eternal confrontation with her rival, the wife with whom she must share Jacob Abraham Camille, the wife who will bear his children. The pregnant Leah-

Dinah-Hagar-(Keturah) Julie stands alone in the Paysanne dans un champ de choux, pregnant and unwed as she was until June 14, 1871. She is the woman who lives with a man without the benefit of marriage, to be considered a whore because of this. She was the young French girl who went to the louee des domestiques in town to find employment with Rachel Pissarro, as Dinah and Hagar had gone to town.

This character derives from the event of the birth of Jeanne Marguerite Eva dite Cocotte on August 27, 1881.

Jeanne Pissarro, dite Cocotte, was named after the first daughter, Jean Rachel, who was born in 1865 and died in

1874. The Pissarro's had another daughter who died shortly after her birth in 1870. Cocotte's birth was a great joy and a cause for celebration in the Pissarro 206 household. Pissarro now had three women in his life, each demanding his attention.

Camille Pissarro created the jardiniere in honor of this event. That is the reason why the themes of fertility and abundance permeate all levels of the iconography. Cocotte is the fruit of the womb, and following the established method of working, Pissarro made use of puns on her name. The affectionate name of

Cocotte means a poule or chicken in the language of children, and is a familiar term for a "woman of light morals." Chickens, or poules, as a group refers to "la population d'une abbaye des S'offre-a-tous." This humorously identifies Cocotte with Dinah and Hagar after she left Abram and Sarai. She is the courtesan-type of the Paysanne dans un champ de choux who finds her

"fatherless" child under the cabbage plant; and the young girl who goes to the fair. Cocotte was born 28 days before Tishri in 1881 and 28 days before Rosh Hoshanah, in time for the harvest festivals. 207

Notes to Chapter IV

1 Rabbi Yaakov Culi, in Genesis 30:14-16, Va Yetze 1, in Book Three. The Twelve Tribes. From Jacob until Joseph, Genesis 3, Vol. 3a in The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (New York: Maznaim Publishing Corporation, 1977), [p. 72]. See also Ramban (Nachmanides) on Genesis 30:14.

^ Eugene Rolland, "Mandragora (Genre) (Linn^). - La mandragore," in Volune 8 of Flore populaire ou histoire naturelle des plantes (rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967), p. 127.

"La mandragore rende les femmes fecondes. Un jour une putain s'adressa £l la mandragore pour la rendre feconde, mais la plante refusa."

Ibid, p. 128.

"La mandragore signifie generative conjonction."

4 Ibid, p. 127.

Culi, Genesis 34:31, Va Yishlach 3, Book Three, [p. 177].

® Culi, Genesis 34:1, Va Yishlach 3, Book Three, [p. 162]. 7 ' Rashi, commentary on Genesis 34:1, Pentateuch with Tarqum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi1s Commentary, translated by Rev. M. Rosenbaum and Dr. A. M. Silbermann (Jerusalem: The Silbermann Family, 5733 [1929]), [pp. 164-5].

® La foire de la Saint-Martin, Pontoise (The Fair of Saint Martin's, Pontoise). 1872. P&V 178, 54 x 65 cm., 21.3 x 25.6 in., oil on canvas.

® Foire de la Saint Martin a Pontoise (Saint- Martin's Day Fair at Pontoise). 1874. Delteil 131 (Leymarie and Melot, p. 135), 21.5 x 27.8 cm., 8.46 x 10.94 in., lithograph. (Leymarie and Melot, P 135). 208

I® Foire de la Saint Martin et* Pontoise (Saint- Martin' s Day Fair at Pontoise). 1879. Delteil 21 11.9 x 16.0 cm., 4.69 x 6.3 in., etching. (Leymarie and Melot, P 21).

Foire de la Saint Martin, Pontoise (Fair of Saint-Martin's, Pontoise). 1881. P&V 1618, 15 x 55 cm., 5.91 x 21.65 in., fan.

*1 O ^ Marche aux chevaux, foire de la Saint-Martin, Pontoise (Horse Market, Fair of Saint-Martin, Pontoise). 1883. P&V 1372, 16 x 29 cm., 6.3 x 11.4 in., gouache.

Culi, on Genesis 33:20, Va Yishlach 2, Book Three, [p. 156].

1^ Paul Joanne, Dictionnaire q^ographique, s.v. Pontoise.

13 Arnold van Gennep, "Les ceremonies agricoles et pastorales de l'automne," Part 4 of Les cferemonies periodiques cycliques et saisonnieries, Section 6 of Volume 1, Manuel de folklore francais contemporain (Paris: Editions A. et J. Picard et Cie, 1953), pp. 2826-27.

"...de la Saint-Martin ef Noel avait "ete institute une periode de jeune, nomme Petit- Car£me, dont la vigile prit les allures d'une sorte de Carnaval attenu£, avec farces viandes et vins, chantes et danses, ce qui se nommer martiner, et ef laquelle m£me Rabelais encore fait allusion, bien que le Petit-Car'&ne eut €te aboli au XXIIIe siecle. Cette invention liturgique avait done rendu licite et quelque degr^ la festivit^ qui existait ant^rieursement^ et justifiait plus ou moin le patronage d€volu a ce sait, pour ne boire que l'eau, des 4briaques et des ivrognes, patronage populaire qui a souvent suscit£ l'horreur des gens d'^glise. De l'ivrognerie aux plais^rs €roti^ues, il n'y a pas loin, ni aux adulteres; d'ou par endroits l'attribution au saint du patronage des maris cocus." 209

16 Ibid, p. 2824.

"... la date de louee des domestiques de ferine ou de leur depart ,vers d'autres patrons, sort pour une annee entiere, sort seulement jusqu’a la Saint-Jean de l'annee suivante, sans rites spCciaux qui mettraient sp^cialement ce changement social sous l'^gide protectrice du saint."

^ For a discussion of the life and problems of the peasant woman in France see Jean-Louis Flandrin, Les amours paysannes (Paris: Gullimard/Julliard, [ 1975]) and Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Moderization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1976).

1 ft ■LO Culi, on Genesis 25:1, Chayay Sarah 3, in Book Two. The Patriarchs From Abraham until Jacob. Genesis II, Vol. 2 in The Torah Anthology, ["p"I 436). CONCLUSION

The four scenes on Camille Pissarro's jardiniere are the key to understanding his early genre subjects.

Central to this is the depiction of the fair of Saint

Martin's which serves as the unifying theme for the three harvests which complete its decoration. Folk beliefs and practices associating these harvests with weddings and sexual mores are readily found in contemporary and easily accessible literature, such as that of George Sand or

Cubernatis. So too, Pissarro's Jewish background appears to have made him sensitive to such literary subjects and rural traditions.

With this insight, it becomes certain that Pissarro selected images which represent specific types of people and their activities. This is made even more apparent, since they are repeated in numerous compositions; existing as individual entities in individual works they transmit their character to other compositions thereby acquiring a broader, richer and deeper significance.

Thus, like actors who represent a similar character or role, they are used in a variety of situations, creating

210 211 a narrative. Individual works become sequential and form, related groups, providing narrative linkages.

Three specific personae emerge from the network of associations that Camille Pissarro developed for the quadriplex iconographic scheme of the jardiniere. Each is identifiable by physical characteristics; and, while these figures are descriptively identifiable, they appear to be emblematic and symbolic as well. These three represent different stages of human life, roles which are defined by their manner of presentation and the narrative in which they take part. The young female figure, who exists in a state of innocence, wears her hair uncovered in the "cueilleux de pommes" ("gathering of apples"); symbolically, she is representative of Eve before the

Fall. The mature woman, who is sexually aware, is married for she wears a scarf to cover her hair; symbolically, she represents Eve after the Fall. The third character is male; he wears a coat, or vest, and a hat with its brim turned up at the sides; symbolically, he is Adam. All three reappear and participate in other works by Pissarro, playing out their peasant and symbolic roles.

The social interaction of male and female, the acquisition of sexual experience, is also an attribute of 212 this narrative. The peasants Pissarro selected for depiction are generic types, ones that reveal specific sexual mores by means of the context in which they are presented. Thus, the narrative and its sexual and symbolic relevance derives from Pissarro's observation of actual peasants in the context of their lives as they worked, loved and worshipped in and around Pontoise; they are people he knew and painted. They became sublimated into archetypes, as Adam and Eve are biblically and as these very people's ancestors are historically — the greater meaning of their lives revealed by relevant biblical and folk traditions.

The female archetype is represented with her hair fastened behind her head, with the presence of a scarf or lack thereof indicative of her matrimonial state and sexual awareness. Between 1881 and 1886, she is frequently represented in Pissarro's genre compositions.

Furthermore, she appears to have reference to a specific individual as well — Pissarro's portraits of his wife,

Julie, often show her with her hair arranged in this manner, viz. Portrait de Mme. J. Pissarro, esquisse

(Portrait of Mme. Pissarro, sketch, c. 1874? fig. 91),1

Portrait de Mme. Pissarro cousant pr^s d'une fen£tre

(Portrait of Mme. Pissarro Knitting near a Window, ca. 213

1877; fig. 92),^ and Portrait de Mme. Pissarro (Portrait

of Mme. Pissarro, 1883; fig. 93).^ Apparently Pissarro viewed his archetype as not only being present generically in the peasantry but most directly in the character of his wife and lover; this suggested autobio­ graphical implications as relevant to the jardiniere as well.

As Pissarro sees the universal female character reflected in the personality of his wife, so his male archetype apparently evolved from his familiarity with and portraits of various men. An early example is his

Portrait de Cezanne (Portrait of Cezanne; fig. 94),^ painted in 1874, in which his collaborator/student wears the familiar, and now archetypical, hat. As well, the typology is found in Le pere Melon sciant du bois,

Pontoise (Father Melon Sawing Wood, Pontoise, 1879; fig.

95)^ and Le pere Melon fendant du bois (Father Melon

Splitting Wood, 1880; fig. 96).^ As a generic figure, the male occurs less frequently in Pissarro's paintings, usually in a subordinate or passive role; observing, attendant or laboring in the background. As in

Pissarro's paintings so it was in his own life, the chief source of psychological tension was in the relationship between women - his mother and his wife. 214

The persona of the young woman participates in his narratives in a manner complimentary to the other women's roles, serving as a sub-plot. Her character is revealed primarily in the portrayal of domestic activities. One such example is Le petit dejeuner, jeune paysanne prenant son caf^ au lait (Breakfast, Young Peasantwoman Taking

Her Coffee, 1881; fig. 97)^. Such scenes are used to illustrate aspects of the biblical "curses of Eve;" this particular example was illucidated by Rabbi Culi:

The fact that a (married) woman must constantly keep her head covered so that her hair should not be seen. She may not even be seen at the window.

This "curse" is biblically apparent in Genesis 34 in the story of Dinah:

As discussed in the portion of Bereshith, gentiles are bound by the Seven Universal Commandments, one of which involves adultery. There is no difference in causing a Jew to sin or causing a gentile to sin in this respect. If a woman stands near a window (while dressed immodestly) she can cause passers by to be sexually stimulated. (This can lead to mastur­ bation on the part of young men, and) the prohibi­ tion regarding masturbation and onanism applies to Jew and gentile alike.... If a woman causes a man to commit such a sin, she is also guilty.

It is in this way that the depictions of this woman become an extension of the theme of the Fall and its consequences, and can be linked with the jardiniere narratives through the exegetical discussion of the story 215 of Dinah. As in the instance of the woman depicted at the window she becomes stigmatized as sinful, even though not consciously or physically seen in the act of sexual provocativeness; Pissarro further enhances the sexual nature of the scene, drawing upon emblematic literature

— by portraying her stirring coffee in a cup with a spoon— an erotic image.

Pissarro portrayed three figures in La march^ eb la vollaille, Pontoise (The Poultry Market, Pontoise, 1882; fig. 98).H The younger figure, carrying out her role as innocent temptress, displays her youthful beauty at the market, her blond hair shining in the light. She looks to her right, towards the male figure who glances back in her direction. The older woman in the foreground is dressed in peasant clothes, coarse ones like those of the man at her right. She looks at the pretty young woman, who, in catching her husband's eye, represents the youth and beauty she herself once had.

Thus, through its personae, this painting reveals several insights into an older woman's personality — nostalgia, possible envy, awareness of aging — all of which Pissarro represented in the jardiniere composition,

Recolte des pommes de terre. Like the fields and orchards, the market where goods are exchanged serves as 216

the arena for the interaction between human beings, and

the narrative implications are those relevant to love and

sex, life and death. Further, it was at markets and

fairs that peasant girls came to louees, hiring

themselves out for six to twelve months. As we know from

contemporary novels and slang, the general attitude was

that these youngsters were seduced by their masters.

Thus, it would have been at a louee that La petite bonne de la campagne (Young Country Maid, 1882; fig. 99)^

would have obtained her position, quite like Julie Vellay had many years before.

The vernacular of the poultry market confirms the erotic connotations of this. In French, a "young chicken" is a cocotte, a term that can signify "a woman of light morals.And, while volaille is the generic term for "birds" or "poultry," it also can indicate a

"debauched woman or girl"14 or a "woman more than frivolous, and even a bit whorish."1® The "seller of poultry," the volailler, refers to someone who "lacks stability in their affections, becoming the friend of the first to come."1® Furthermore, a 19th century French dictionary defines marchandise (merchandise) as "the nature of a man or woman which, for both of them, but 217

especially the last, is an object of commerce."^ The

"female seller" or marcheuse refers to a:

woman, who had been a girl and who, being so no longer, is responsible for conducting in the ways of sin those who are still young. "Her functions are to call out to the passersby in a low voice, to entice them to come into the bordello where, after these banal advertisements, they should find an exquisite choice of young girls. In the first-rate houses of tolerance, there are ordinarily several marcheuses whose principal employment is to promenade the girls of love in the boulevards and the passageways." 8

The slang association of poultry with young women who enjoy the company of men, and the identification of marketing with sexual liaisons, is naturally the identity

Pissarro's visual portrayals take on — they occur in the same context — the mores of market and field. With his three women, Pissarro has created a pictorial menage a trois.

Likewise, in 1881, Pissarro began creating compositions, such as Paysannes au repos, portraying women conversing. The topics of conversation, since the women are associated in some works of Pissarro's works with his archetypical persona, carry implications of their experiences with love and sex, life and death, envy and awareness — themes of the jardiniere's Recolte des pommes de terre. Again, argot euphemisms of the 1880's support this amourous context. Causer, meaning "to 218 converse," also connotes making love, "faire l'amour";^ while causeuse, meaning a "female speaker or person involved in a conversation," refers to a "femme chaude au cul" ("woman with hot pants"

Thus, by a study of the actual mores, language and customs of the people involved, Pissarro's images become comprehensible as parts of a narrative whose multiple images and meanings are mutually reinforcing. There are many reinforcing points for understanding Pissarro's works — autobiographical, religious, folkloric, arqotique and so forth. The most important, and comprehensive, assurance of the intent of such meanings comes through the cumulative awareness of the roles such images play by means of their repetition in his oeuvre, and final grouping in the jardiniere.

Camille Pissarro created an art that was at once highly personal and intimate, and yet objective in its representation. He insisted that art be based on the study and understanding of nature, and that art derive from the artist's personal experience. For each individual that experience involved not only objective nature and subjective mental activity, but also the complex social, economic and cultural mores of those depicted. 219

The meaningfulness of his art inherently extended to the traditions which these images and scenes embody — folkloric, religious and artistic. He understood that people, in naturally continuing the mores of their ancestors, even when unconsciously so for them, revealed to the attentive, aware and knowledgeable, a profound meaning. Biblical tradition was as natural a part of the context of their lives as was sexual slang. It was the spiritual and humorous resource of their lives as it was for Pissarro and his family.

Pissarro studied how past artists had given meaningful form to their understanding of nature. It was against the lack of this in contemporary formulaic repetition of others ideas that he railed, not art itself. The conveyance of this integrity was part of his success as the quintessential teacher, who was regarded by two of his most successful pupils, Paul Cezanne and

Paul Gauguin, as their master.

In 1902, Gauguin wrote in his notebook:

If the whole of Pissarro's work is examined, we find there, in spite of fluctuations, not only a strong artistic will, never belied, but also an essentially intuitive, pure-bred art. However far one may be from the hayrick or hillock, in a Pissarro one is able to go out, walk around it, look at it... He looked at everybody, they say! Why not? Everybody looked at him, too, but denied it. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him. 220

Pissarro's willingness to examine his world was part of an insatiable curiosity to explore all facets of his environment, and from this wide-ranging experience he selected the individual elements for his work. This selection process was not controlled by an external idea, but naturally resided in the scenes to which he was drawn and which he chose to depict. It was this insight that

Pissarro passed on to students.

Cezanne summed up much of this in a letter to Emile

Bernard concerning Pissarro:

The Louvre is the book where we learn to read. We must however not content ourselves with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let's leave them to study beautiful nature, let us try to extract its spirit, let us try to express ourselves following our personal temperament. Time and reflection, moreover, modifies vision little by little and finally the understanding comes to us. You will understand me better when we return; study modifies our vision to such a point that the humble and colossal Pissarro is found to be justified in his anarchistic theories.

These ideas are similar to those Pissarro himself expressed in his letters to his son Lucien. The study of other art and artists provided an important historical base on which new, contemporary ideas could be developed.

But art must evolve from the artist's study and under­ standing of nature, and this is tempered through a process of conscious and unconscious deliberation over 221 time. The result is a unique product of individual temperament, and Pissarro was made sensitive to it, it appears, through his own Jewish heritage. 222

Notes to Conclusion

Portrait de Mme. J. Pissarro, esquisse (Portrait of Mme. J. Pissarro, Sketch). ca. 1874. P&V 290, 116 x 89 cm., 45.67 x 35.04 in., oil on canvas.

^ Portrait de Mme. Pissarro cousant pr^s d'une fen£tre (Portrait of Mme. Pissarro Knitting near a W indow ). ca . 1877. P&V 423, 55 x 46 cm., 21.65 x 18.11 in., oil on canvas.

^ Portrait de Mme. Pissarro (Portrait of Mme. P issarro). 1883. P&V 1565, 61 x 47 cm., 24.02 x 18.50 in., pastel.

^ Portrait de ClTzanne (Portrait of Cezanne). 1874. P&V 293, 73 x 60 cm., 28.74 x 23.62 in., oil on canvas.

^ Le p^re Melon sciant du bois, Pontoise (Father Melon Sawing Wood, Pontoise). 1879. P&V 499, 89 x 117 cm., 35.04 x 46.06 in., oil on canvas.

® Le p^re Melon fendant du bois (Father Melon Splitting Wood). 1880. P&V 1336, 32 x 21 cm., 12.60 x 8.27 in., gouache.

7 Le petit dejeuner, jeune paysanne prenant son c a f e au lait (Breakfast, Young Peasantwoman Taking Her C o f f e e ). 1881. P&V 549, 65 x 54 cm., 25.59 x 21.26 in., oil on canvas.

® Rabbi Yaakov Culi, on Genesis 3:16, Bereshith 9. Book One. Beginnings. From Creation until Abraham. Genesis I, in The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (New York: Maznaim Publishing Corporation, 1977), [pp.273-274].

® Culi, on Genesis 34:1, Va Yishlach 3, in Book Three. The Twelve Tribes. From Jacob until Joseph, in The Torah Anthology, Vol. 3a, TpT 161].

10 This erotic association is found in Alfred Delvau, Dictionnaire ^rotique moderne (1891), s.v. Cafe des deux colonnes: 223

"Prendre son cafe* aux deux colonnes, c'est-^- dire gamahucher une femme. Le con sert le cafe au lait; les deux jambs sont la pour la forme, et ne servent que d'enseigne: aux Deux Colonnes.

H La marche a la volaille, Pontoise (The Poultry M arket, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 576, 81 x 65 cm., 31.89 x 25.59 in., oil on canvas.

12 La petite bonne de la campagne (Young Country M a i d ). 1882. P&V 575, 65 x 54 cm., 25.59 x 22 .26 in., oil on canvas.

Nouvelle petit Larousse (1971), s.v. cocotte.

l^ Alfred Delvau, Dictionnaire de la lanque verte (1883), s.v. volaille.

"femme ou fille debauchee"

13 Delvau, Dictionnaire erotique moderne (1891), s.v. volaille.

"femme plus que legere, et irfeine un peu putain."

13 Delvau, Dictionnaire de la lanque verte (1883), s.v. volailler.

"n'avoir pas de stabilite dans ses affections, se faire l'ami du premier venu."

I7 Delvau, Dictionnaire Erotique moderne (1891), s.v. marchandise.

"la nature de l'homme ou celle de la femme, qui, toutes deux, mais la dernier surtout, sont un objet de commerce."

1® Ibid, s.v. marcheuse.

''femme, qui a "ete fille et qui, ne l'^tant plus, est chargee de conduire dans les chemins de vice celles qui le sont encore. "Ses fonctions sont d'apeler les passants a“ voix basse, de les engager ^ monter dans la bordel ou, d'apres ses annonces banales, ils doivent trouver un choix exquis de jeunes personnes. Dans la maison de 224

tolerance de premiere ligne, il y a ordinairement plusieurs marcheuses dont l'emploi principal est de promener les filles d'amour sur les boulevards et dans les passages."

Ibid, s.v. causer. O f) u Ibid, s.v. causeuse.

^1 Paul Gaugin, Raconteurs d'un rapin, Sept. 1902, quoted in J. de Rotonchamp, Paul Gauguin, Paris, p. 237, and cited in Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper, Pissarro; His Life and Work, (New York: Horizon Press, 1980), p. 320. 0 0 ✓ ^ z Paul Cezanne to Emile Bernard, [no date], in Emile Bernard, Souvenirs sur Paul Cezanne, (Paris: Societe^ des Trente, 1912), pp. 85-86. \ N , . Le Louvre est le livre ou nous apprenons a lire. Nous ne devons cependant pas nous contenter de retenir les belles formules de, nos illustres devanciers. Sortons-en pour etudier la belle nature, t£chons d'en degager l'esprit, cherchons a nous exprimer suivant notre temperament personnel. be temps et la reflexion d'ailleurs modifient peu a peu la vision, et enfin la comprehension nous vient.

Vous me comprendrez mieux quand nous reverrons; l'etude modifie notre vision ^ tel point que l'humble et colossal Pissarro se trouve justifie de ses theories anarchistes. APPENDIX A

[From George Sand, Promenades autour d'un village,

(Paris: Calmann-Levy, editeurs, 1866), pp. 151-7.

Available in English translation as The Devil*s Pool, translated by Jane Mirrot Sedgwick and Ellery Sedgwick,

(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1896.]

Le mariage est la seule grande f€te de la vie d'une paysanne. II y a encore ce gen^reux amour-propre qui consiste a' faire manger la subsistance d'une ann^e dans les trois jours de la noce. Cependant les ceremonies

Stranges de cette solennife tendent ^ se perdre. J'ai vu finir celle des livrees, qui se faisait la veille du mariage et qui avait une couleur bien particuliere. Je l'ai racontee quelque part, ainsi que celle du chou, qui se fait le lendemain de la noce; mais, cette derni^re

'etant encore en vigueur, je crois devoir y revenir ici.

Ce jour-la, les noceux quittent la maison avec les maries et la musique; on s'en va en cortege arracher dans quelque jardin le plus beau chou qu'on puisse trouver.

Cette operation dure au moins une heure. Les anciens se forment en conseil autour des legumes soumis a la

225 discussion qui precede le choix definitif: ils se font passer, de nez a nez, une immense paire de lunettes grotesques, ils se tiennent de longs discours, ils dissertent, ils consultent, ils se disent a l'oreille des paroles mysterieuses, ils se prennent le menton ou se grattent la tehie comme pour mediter; enfin ils jouent une sorte de com^die a laquelle doit se preter quiconque a de l'esprit et de l'usage parmi les graves parents et invites de la noce.

Enfin le choix est fait. On dresse des cordes qu'on attache au pied du chou dans tous les sens. Un pr'etendu geom^tre ou n^cromant (c'est tout un dans l.es idees de l'assistance) apporte une mani^re de compas, une r^gle, un niveau, et dessine je ne sais quels plans cabalistiques autour de la plante consacree. Les fusils et les pistolets donnent le signal. La vielle grince, la musette braille; chaucun tire la corde de son d Q t£, et enfin, apr^s bien des hesitations et des efforts simul^s, le chou est extrait de la terre et plantfe dans une grande corbeille avec des fleurs, des rubans, des banderoles et des fruits. Le tout est mis sur une civiere que quatre hommes des plus vigoureux soulevent et vont emporter au domicile conjugal. 227

Mais alors appara^t tout a coup un couple effrayant,

bizarre, qu'accompagnent les cris et les huees des chiens

effrayes et des enfants moqueurs. Ce sont deux garcons

dont l'un est habille en femme. C'est le jardinier et la

jardiniere. Le mari est le plus sale des deux. C ’est le

vice qui est cense^ l'avoir avili; la femme n'est que

malheureuse et degradee par les desordres de son "£poux.

Ils se disent preposes a la garde et ^ la culture du chou

sacre.

"Le mari porte diverses qualifications qui toutes ont

un sens. On l'appelle indifferemment le pailloux, parce

qu'il est parfois coiffe' d ’une perruque de paille et

qu'il se rembourre le corps de bosses de paille, sous sa

blouse; le peilloux, parce qu'il est couvert de peilles

(guenilles, en vieux francais; Rabelais dit peilleroux et

coqueteux quand il parle des mendiants); enfin le pa'ien,

ce qui est plus significatif encore.

"II arrive le visage barbouill^ de suie et de lie de

vin, quelquefois couronn^" de pampres comme un Sil^ne

antique, ou affuble^ d'un masque grotesque. Une tasse

^brecttee ou un vieux sabot pendu a sa ceinture lui sert

a demander l’aum'&he du vin. Personne ne la lui refuse,

et il feint de boire immoderement, puis il r£pand le vin

par terre, en signe de libation, a* chaque pas. "II tombe, il se roule dans la boue, ilaffecte d'etre en proie a l'ivresse la plus honteuse. Sa pauvre femme court apres lui, le ramasse, appelle au secours, arrache les cheveux de chanvre qui sortent en m^ches h^rissees de sa cornette immonde, pleure sur l'abjection de son mari, et lui fait des reproches pathetiques.

"Tel est le role de la jardiniere, et ses lamentations durent pendant toute la comedie. Car c'est une veritable comedie libre, improvisee, jouee en plein air, sure les chemins, a travers champs, aliment^e par tous les incidents fortuits de la promenade, et k laquelle tout le mond prend part, gens de la noce et du dehors, K&tes des maisons et passants des chemins, durant une grande partie de la journee. Le theme est invariable, mais on brode cl l'infini sur ce th^me, et c'est lei qu'il faut voir l'instinct mimique, la faconde de sang-froid, l'esprit de repartie et meme l'^loquence naturelle de nos paysans.

"Le r&le de la jardiniere est ordinairement confie el un homme mince, imberbe et a teint frais, qui sait donner une grande veritC a son personnage et jouer le d^sespoir burlesque avec assez de naturel pour qu'on en soit 'egaye^ et attriste en m£me temps, comme d'un fait r^el. 229

"Apr^s que le malheur de la femme est constate par ses plaintes, les jeunes gens de la noce l'engagent ci laisser la son ivrogne de mari et a se divertir avec eux.

Ils lui offrent le bras et l'entrainent. Peu ^ peu elle s'abandonne, s'egaye, se met a* courir tant&t avec l'un, tant'St avec l'autre, prenant des allures d£vergond£es.

Ceci est une moralit^. L'inconduite du mari provoque celle de la femme.

"Le pa^en se reveille alors de son ivresse. II cherche des yeux sa compagne, s'arme d'une corde et d'un b^ton et court apr^s elle. On le fait courir, on se cache, on passe la pa*ienne de l'un a l'autre, on essaye de distraire et de tromper le jaloux. Enfin, il rejoint son infidele et veut la battre; mais tout le monde s'interpose. Ne la battez pas, ne battez jamais votre femmej_ est la formule qui se repete a satiate dans ces scenes.

"Il y a dans tout cela un enseignement na'if, grossier m'eme, qui sent fort son moyen age, mais qui fait toujours impression sur les assistants. Le pa*ien effraye et dego'ute les jeunes filles qu'il poursuit et feint de vouloir embrasser; c'est de la comedie de moeurs k l'^tat le plus ^elementaire, mais aussi le plus frappant. 230

"Mais pourquoi ce personnage repoussant doit-il, le premier, porter la main sur le chou des qu'il est replant'e dans la corbeille? Ce chou sacre est l'embleme de la f^condite" matrimoniale; mais cet ivrogne, ce vicieux, ce pa’ien, quel est-il? Sans doute il y a la un s ^ mystere anterieur au christianisme, la tradition de quelque bacchanale antique. Peut-^tre ce jardinier n'est-il pas moins que le dieu des jardins en personne, a qui l'antiquite rendait un culte s"erieux sous des formes obsc^nes. En passant par le christianisme primitif, cette representation est devenue une sort de mystere, sotie ou moralite, comme on en jouait dans toutes les fetes." [La Mare au diable]

Quoi qu'il en soit, le chou est port£ au logis des maries et plant“e de la main du paien sur le plus haut du toit. On l'arrose de vin, et on le laisse la jusqu'a ce que l'orage l'emporte; mais il y reste quequefois assez longtemps pour qu'en le voyant verdir ou se secher, on puisse tirer des inductions sur la fecondite ou la sterilite promise s' la famille.

Apres le chou, on danse et on mange encore jusqu1^ la nuit. APPENDIX B

Apparently, Rabbi Culi derived his translation from from the commentaries of earlier authorities, but Rashi provides the following translation of Genesis 1:11-12:

And God said, The earth shall sprout forth sprouts, herb yielding seed, fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.* And the earth brought forth sprouts, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after its kind: and God saw that it was good.

And Ramban [Nachmanides] comments on Rashi's translation:

Now Rabbeinu Shloma [Rashi] wrote: "Deshe essev (grass, herb). Deshe does not mean all the same as esev and esev does not mean the same as deshe, for my deshe is meant that which forms the covering of the ground when it is filled with vegetation, and it is not linguistically correct to say 'this or that deshe.' Each by itself is called this or that esev. This interpretaiton of Rashi is not correct. For if it were so, the word deshe could have no plural, and yet we find the Sages saying, 'If a person grafted together two kinds of deshaim, what should the law be?' And the Rabbi himself mentions deshaim. Rather, deshe is the young growing plant, and esev is the mature plant which produces seeds. This is why Scripture says, 'tadshei ha'aretz' (let the earth put forth) 'deshi' (young plants), and it would not be correct usage to say ta'asiv [for the word esev applies to mature products which produce seeds]. And every yoUng thing that grows from the earth is called deshe, even trees. Therefore tadshe ha'aretz in the verse extends also to the expression etz pri (the fruit-tree).

231 232

[This interpretation is necessary] since He did not say, 'Let the earth put forth deshe esev and let it bring forth the fruit-tree.' The word deshe thus has the same meaning as tz'michah (growing). Similarly we find: For the pasture of the wilderness 'dash'u' (do spring), for the tree beareth its fruit.

The significance of which translation is accepted

becomes apparent in Genesis 1:29-30. Rashi offers this

translation:

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herB bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.* And to every animal of the earth, and to every fowl of the heaven, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is a living soul, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so.^

Commenting on the phrase "And to every beast of the

earth", Rashi writes:

Scripture places cattle and beasts on a level with them (human beings: that is, it places all alike in the same category) with regard to food, and did not permit Adam to kill any creature and eat its flesh, but all alike were to eat herbs. But when the era of the "Sons of Noah" began, He permitted them to eat meat, for it is said (Gen.IX.3.) "every moving thing that lives should be for food for yourselves... 'even as the herb that I permittted to the first man, so do "I give to you every thing.

With Rashi distinguishing among three types of vegetation in Genesis 1:11, the Biblical account allows man to eat the fruit of the trees and every herb bearing

seed. The animals are given the green herb to eat. 233

Rashi adds that man also was given the green herb as food but does so by drawing from later scripture.

Ramban comments on this same passage, and on Rashi's exegesis:

He did not permit Adam and his wife to kill any creature and eat its meat, but all alike were to eat herbs. When the era of "the sons of Noah" came, he permitted them to eat meat, as it is said, Every living thing that liveth shall be for food for you; as the green herb have I given you all; even as the green herb that I permitted to the first man, so do I permit you everything. Thus is the language of Rashi. And so did the Rabbi explain it in Tractate Sanhedrim "And to every beast of the earth - to you and to the beasts I have given the herbs and the fruits of the trees, and every green herb for food." But if so, then we must explain the expression, every green herb for food, to mean "and every green herb." But this is not so. Rather, He gave to man and his wife every herb yielding seed and all fruit of the trees [as mentioned in Verse 29], and to the beasts of the earth and the fowl of the heaven He gave all green herb [as mentioned in Verse 30] but neither the fruit of the tree nor the seeds. The food of them all was thus not the same. However, meat was not permitted to them until the time of the "sons of Noah," as is the opinion of our Rabbis. And this is the plain meaning of the verse.

The meaning of the expression, every herb yielding seed... and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you shall be for food, is that they should eat the seeds of the herbs, such as the grains of wheat, barley, beans, and the life, and that they should eat all fruits of the tree; but the tree itself was not given to them for food, nor was 234

the herb itself until man was cursed and he was told, And thou shalt eat the herb of the field.^

Rabbi Culi reports Genesis 1:29-30 thus:

God said, "Behold, I have given you all seedbearing grasses on the face of the earth, and every tree that has seedbearing fruit - to you it shall be to eat.* But for every beast of the earth, every bird of the sky, and everything that creeps on the ground having in it a living soul, all grass vegetation shall be as food. And it was so."°

His commentary proceeds:

The Torah now informs us that God told Adam and his wife, "From now on there is food reserved for you, the same as that of all other animals, birds and creeping things. This would consist of various types of grains, trees and vegetables. [Rashi] According to another opinion, only Adam and Eve were allowed to eat grain grasses and the fruit of the trees. The other animals were originally not permitted to eat these things, since it would not be fitting for them to be equal to man. God therefore told them to only eat "grass vegetation," and nothing else. [Ramban]7

Rabbi Culi synthesizes these two opinions about

Genesis 1:11 and Genesis 1:29-30. He follows the tripartite division of vegetation into three categories of Rashi, while dividing these three categories between man and beast in the manner of Ramban. This synthesis becomes important for understanding Genesis 111:17-19.

Rashi explains the passage "Cursed be the ground for thy

sake" in the following manner: 235

It will produce to you cursed objects as flies, fleas and ants; it may be compared to the case of one who gets into depraved ways, and people curse the breasts at which he was suckled.®

Rashi has compared the mother of one who becomes depraved with the earth, which has likewise been cursed.

The woman is held accountable for sins of her progeny.

He then explains the relationship between Genesis 1:29 and 1:18:

And thou shalt eat the herb of the field - what curse is involved here? Was he not told as a blessing, (I, 29) "Behold I have given unto you every herb yielding seed?" But what is stated here at the beginning of this passage? "Cursed be the ground etc.... in toil shalt thou eat of it?" And after all your toil "thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." This means when you saw it with cereals and vegetables it shall bring forth for you thorns and thistles and other weeds, and you will perforce have to eat them for lack of other food.®

Ramban does not treat the relationship of these verses to

Adam's curses in Genesis 111:17-19. 236

Notes to Appendix B

1 From Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi's Commentary, translated by Rev. M. Rosenbaum and Dr. A. M. Silbermann (Jerusalem: The Silbermann Family, 5733 [1929]).

^Ramban (Nachmanides), on Genesis 1:11, Bereshith, Commentary on the Torah. Genesis, translated and annotated by Rabbi Dr. Charles B. Chavel (New York: Shila Publishling House, Inc., 1974), pp. 40-41.

8 From Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos...and Rashi1s Commentary, p p . 7 8.

4 Ibid, Rashi's commentary on Genesis 1:30, pp. 7-8.

8 Ramban, on Genesis 1:29, Bereshith, pp. 56-58.

8 Rabbi Yaakov Culi, The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez, [p. 177] .

^ Culi, on Genesis 1:29-30, Bereshith 6, Book One. Beginnings. From.Creation until Abraham, Vol. 1 of The Torah Anthology^ [p. 177].

8 Rashi on Genesis 3:17, in Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, p. 15.

8 Rashi on Genesis 3:18, p. 16. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, Kathleen. Camille Pissarro; A Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978.

The Ancient Cornish Drama. Translated and edited by Edwin Norris. 2 Vols., Oxford: The University Press, 1859.

Arthur, William. Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names with an Essay of Their Derivation and Impact. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co., 1857.

Ashe, Geoffrey. The Virgin. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.

The Babylonian Talmud. [English translation]. 6 Parts, edited by Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein. London: The Soncino Press, 1948.

Bailly-Herzberg, Janine. "Camille Pissarro et Rouen," in Les arts a~ Rouen, special edition of L'oeil, nos. 312-313 (July-Aug., 1981), pp. 54-59.

Bates, H. E. "French Painters. Pissarro and Sisley," Apol l o , Vol. 55 (1952 ), pp. 176-180.

Benardete, Mair Jose. Hispanic Culture and the Character of the Sephardic Jews. 2nd ed., rev. New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, Inc., 1982.

Benisovich, Michel N. and James Dallett. "Camille Pissarro and Fritz Melbye in Venezuela," Apollo, Vol. 84 (1966), pp. 44-47.

Bernard, Emile. Souvenirs sur Paul Cezanne. Paris: Societe des Trentes, 1912.

Bidault de l'Isle, Georges. Vieux dictons dg. nos campagnes. 2 Vols. Paris: Nouvelles Editions de la Tocsin d'Or, 1952.

237 238

Block, Abraham, P. The Biblical and Historical Background of Jewish Customs and Ceremonies. New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1980.

Biblical and Historical Background of the Jewish Holy Days. New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1978.

Blunt, Anthony. Nicolas Poussin. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. 1958. 2 Vols., Bollingen Series XXXV. 7, New York: Pantheon Books, 1967.

Bodelsen, Merete. "Early Impressionist Sales, 1874-94, in Light of Some Unpublished 'proc^s-verbaux,'" Burlington Magaziner -Vol. 110, no. 783, (June, 1968), pp. 331-349.

"Gauguin the Collector," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 112, no. 810 (Sept., 1970), pp. 590-615.

Bosquet, Amelie. La Normandie romanesque et merveilleuse. Traditions, legendes et superstitions populaire de cette province. Paris: J. Techener,

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Pissarro: Camille Pissarro 1830-1903. 1980.

Camille Pissarro: The Impressionist Printmaker. Catalogue by Barbara Stern Shapiro, 197 3.

Bouillon, Jean-Paul. "L1impressionnisme," Revue de L'art, No. 51 (1981), pp. 75-85.

Boulton, Alfred. "Camille Pissarro in Venezuela," Connoisseur, Vol. 189, no. 759 (May, 1975), pp. 36- 42.

Bournon, F. "Pontoise," La grande encyclopedie. inventaire raisonne des science, des lettres et des arts"! Paris: Soci£t<=! Anonyme de la Grande Encyclopedie, 1886.

Boussel, Patrice. Histoire et legendes de la Normandie mysterieuse. Tchou, 1970. 239

Brettell, Richard. Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in a Landscape. Yale University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1977. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1978.

Review of Shikes and Harper, Pissarro: His Life and Work, in Art Journal, Vol 41, no. 3 (1981), pp. 271-275.

Brettell, Richard R. and Christopher Lloyd. A Catalogue of the Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

Brie, Jehan de. Le bon berger ou le vray regime et governement des bergers et berg^res: compost~par le rustique Jehan de Brie, le bon berger. [1379], 1541; rpt. Paris: Isidore Liseux, Libraire-Editeur, 1879.

Bril, Jacques. Lilith, ou la mere obscure. Paris: Payot, 1981.

Brown, Richard F. "Impressionist technique: Pissarro's optical mixture," Magazine of Art, Vol. 43, pt. 1 (1950), pp. 12-15.

Caillac, Jean. "The Prints of Camille Pissarro, A Supplement to the Cataloque by Loys Delteil," The Print-Collector's Quarterly, Vol. 19, no. 1 (Jan., 1932), pp. 75-86.

Caillot, A. Nouveau dictionnaire proverbial, satirique et burlesque, plus complet que ceux qui ont paru jusqu1^ ce jour, l1usage de toute le monde. Paris: Dauvin, 1826.

Cassuto, Umberto. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1961.

Castagnary, Jules-Antoine. Salons: 1857-1870. 2 Vols. Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier, 1892.

Chassany, Jean-Philippe. Dictionnaire de mefeorologie populaire. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1970. 240

Clark, T. J. Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and and Second French Republic 1848-1851. Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973.

The Painting of Modern Life; Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

Coe, Ralph T. "Camille Pissarro in Paris. A Study of His Later Development." Gazette des Beaux Arts, Vol. 43, 96th Year, Sixth Series (1954), pp. 93-118.

Cogniat, Raymond. Pissarro. Translated by Alice Sachs. New York: Crown Publishing, 1975.

Comstock, Helen. "An Early Pissarro," The Connoisseur, Vol. 97 (Jan.-June, 1936), pp. 43-44.

Cooper, Douglas. "The painters of Auvers-sur-Oise," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 97 (April, 1955), pp. 100- 105.

Culi, Rabbi Yaakov. The Torah Anthology. Me Am Lo'ez. Translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. New York: Maznaim Publishing Corporation, 1977.

Delteil, Loys. Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir, Vol~ 17 in Le peintre-graveur illustre (XIXe et XXe sixties). Paris: Chez l'auteur, 1923.

Delvau, Alfred. Dictionnaire de la langue verte. New edition. Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, 1883.

Dictionnaire erotique moderne. New edition. Paris: La Biblioteque privee, 1969.

Detzel, Heinrich. Christliche Ikonographie: Ein Handbuch zum Verstandniss der christlichen Kunst. 2 Vols., Freiburg im Briesgau, 1896.

Dewhurst, Wynford. Impressionist Painting, Its Genesis and Development. London: G. Newnes, Limited, 1904.

Diccionario de la lengua espanola. Real Academia Espanola, [1956 ]. 241

Dictionary of Folklore ,Mythology and Legeffd. 2 Vols., New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1950. s' Didot, Ambroise Firmin. Etude de Jean Cousin suivie de notices sur Jean Leclerc et Pierre Woeiriot. Paris: Typographie de Ambrois Firmin Didot, 1872.

Douhet, Jules de. Dictionnaire des myst^res ou collection genera le des myst^res, morality's, rites figures et c^rgmonies sinquli^res ayant un caractere public et un but r£ligieux et moral, et jou^s sous le patronage des personnes ecclesiastiques ou par l'entremise des confrgries religieuses suivi d'une notice sur le theatre libre compl^tant l 1ensemble des representations th^fftrales depuis les premiers si^cles de l 1ere chr^tienne jusqu'aux temps modernes. 1854; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977.

Droulers, Eug. Dictionnaire des attributs, allegories, emblemes et symboles. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 11948?].

Drumont, Edward. La France juive. Essai d 1histoire contemporaine. Paris: Libraire Bleriot, 1886.

Dulaure, Jacques-Antoine. Histoire physique, civile et morale de Paris depuis les premiers temps historiques. Paris: Dufour, Mulat et Boulanger, 1856. v Dupont, V. Quand Eve filait. Rodez: Editions Subervie, 1957. ' ^ \ Duranty, Louis Emile Edmond. La nouvelle peinture: a propos du qroupe d 1artistes qui expose dans les gaieties Durand-PauiU New edition with forward and notes by Marcel Guerin, 1876; Paris: Librairie Floury, 1946.

Duret, Theodore. Histoire des peintres impressionistes: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cezanne. Paris: Floury, 1906.

Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, [c. 1971- 72]. 242

Flandrin, Jean-Louis. Les amours paysannes. Paris: Gallimard/Julliarcfi [ 1975 ].

Francastel, Pierre. Monet, Sisley, Pissarro... Paris: A. Skira, 1939.

Frazer, James George. Folklore in the Old Testament; Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. 3 Vols.. London: Macmillan and Co., 1918-19.

Gachet, Paul. Paul van Ryssel: le docteur Gachet, graveur. Paris: Les beaux-arts, Edition d'etudes et de documents, [1954].

Gaidoz, H. "La requisition d'amour et le symbolisme de la pomme," Annuaire de l'^fcole des hautes-Ctudes (1901), pp. 5-33.

Gaster, Moses. The Story of the High Festivals and the Feast of Tabernacles. London: M. L. Cailingold, 1931.

Gaster, Theodor H. Festivals of the Jewish Year. 1953.

Geffroy, Gustave. Claude Monet: sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre. Paris: Les Editions G. Cres & Cie, 1922.

Gennep, Arnold van. La formation des legendes. Paris: Flammarion, 1910.

Manuel de folklore francais contemporain. 4 Vols. Paris: Editions August^ Picard, 1943-1958.

Les rites de passage; ^tude syst^matique des rites de la porte et du serul, de 1 1hospitalite, de l'adoption, de la grossesse de l'accouchemente, des la naissance, de l'enfance, de la pubertfe, de 1 1 initiation, de 1'ordination, du couronnement, des fiancailles et du mariage, des fun£raillesT des saisons, etc. Paris: Emil Nourry, 1909.

Gesenius, William. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic. Translated by Edward Robinson and edited by Frances Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. 1907; rpt. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1962. 243

Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews. Translated by Henrietta Szold. 7 Vols., Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909-1938.

Goodman, Philip. The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 5733/1973.

Gouk, Alan. "Principle, Appearance, Style," Studio: International Journal of Modern Art. Vol. 187, no. 967 (June, 1974), pp. 292-295.

Graber, Hans. Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet. Nach eigenen und fremden Zeuqnissen. Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1943.

Grandville, Jean Ignace Isedore Gerard. Cent proverbs. Paris: H. Fournier, 1845.

Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. New York: McGraw- Hill, 1955.

Graves, Robert and Raphael Patai. Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

Grohmann, W. "Camille Pissarro," Allqemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig:Verlag van E. A. Seeman, 1933.

Gubernatis, Angelo L. La mytholoqie des plantes. 2 Vols.. 1878-1882? rpt. in 1 Vol., New York: Arno Press, 1978.

Gueranger, Abbot. The Liturgical Year. Translated by Dorn Laurence Shepherd. 15 Vols.. 1867; rpt. Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1948-49.

Guerin, Andre. La vie quotidienne en Normandie au temps de Madame Bovary. Librairie Hachette, 1975.

Gwreans an Bys. The Creation of the World. A Cornish Mystery. Edited and translated by Whitley Stokes, London: Williams and Norgate, 1864. 244

Herbert, Robert L. and Eugenia W. Herbert. "Artists and Anarchism: Unpublished Letters of Pissarro, Signac and Others," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 102, no. 692 (Nov., 1960 ), pp 473-482 and no. 693 (Dec., 1960 ) pp. 517-522.

Holme, Charles, editor. Corot and Millet. Translated by Edgar Preston. Special Winter 1902-3 Number of The Studio. London: Offices of The Studio, 1902.

Houbigant, Charles Francois. Racines h€braiques sans points-voyelles ou dictionnaire h€bra*ique par racines, oil sont expliquez, suivant lesanciens et nouveaux interprdtes, touts les mots htabreux et calda*iques du texte original des livres saintsT Paris: Claude Simon et Barthelemy Alix, 1732.

House, John. "New Material on Monet and Pissarro in London in 1870-71," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 120, no. 907 (Oct., 1978), pp. 636-642.

Huysmans, Joris Karl. L'Art moderne. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1883.

The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1907.

Joanne, Paul. "Pontoise," in Dictionnaire gCographique et administratif de la France. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1899.

Jordan, William. The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood. Translated by John Keigwin and edited by Davies Gilbert, London: J. B. Nichols, 1827.

Kolatch, Alfred J. The Name Dictionary. Modern English and Hebrew Names. Middle Village, New York: Jonathan David, Publishers, 1967.

Kotzin, Michael. "Pre-Raphaelitism, Ruskinism and French Symbolism," Art Journal, Vol. 25 (1965-66), pp. 347-350. 245

Kunstler, Charles. Camille Pissarro. Paris: G. Cres et Cie, [1930].

"Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)," La renaissance de l'art francais, Vol. 11, no. 12 (Dec., 1928 ), pp. 4 9 7-501?.

"Des lettres inedites de Camille Pissarro a" Octave Mirbeau (1891-1892) et £i Lucien Pissarro (1898 — 1899 )," Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, Vol. 57 (Jan.-May, 1930), pp. 173-190 and 223-236.

Pissarro: Cities and Landscapes. Translated by Eva Kramer. Lausanne: International Art Books, N.D.

^ s / Labedolliere, Emile de "Pontoise," in Histoire des environs du nouveau Paris. Paris: Georges Barba, N.D., [ca. 1860], pp. 277-292.

Laffont, Robert. Dictionnaire des eglises de France. 5 Vols., Editions Robert Laffont, 1966.

Lanes, Jerrold. "Loan exhibition at Wildenstein," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 107, no. 758 (May, 1965), pp. 274-276.

Lasne, Sophie and Andre Pascal Gaultier. Dictionnaire des superstitions. Tchou, 1980.

Lebeuf, Abbe\ Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocese de Paris. 5 Vols., 1883; rpt. Brussels: Impression anastallique culture et civilisation, 1969-70.

Lecomte, Georges. L'art impressioniste d'apres la collection privee de Durand-Ruel. Paris: Chamerot et Renouard, 1892.

Camille Pissarro. Paris: Les editions Bernheim- Jeune, 1922.

"Un centenaire: un fondateur de 1'impressionnisme: Camille Pissarro," La revue de l'art ancien et moderne, Vol. 57 (Jan.-May, 1930), pp. 157-172. 246

Lefevre-Pontalis, Eugene. Monographie de l'eglise Saint-Maclou de Pontoise. Pontoise: Typographie de Amedee Paris, 1888.

Leigh, Le Chevalier. Dictionnaire de la lanque sainte contenant toutes les origines, ou les mots h^breux tout primitifs que d^rivez, du Vieux Testament. Avec des observations philoloqiques et th£oloqiques. Ouvrage trd's-curieux, tr&s-propre and tr£s- ngcessaire ^ ceux-m€mes qui n'entendent pas las langues savantes. Translated by Louis de Wolgogue. Amsterdam: Chez Pierre Mortier, Libraire, 1703.

Leroux, Philibert Joseph. Dictionnaire comique, satyriques, critique, libre et proverbial avec une explication tr£s-fidele de toute les inanidr-es de parler burlesques, comiques, libres, satyriques, critiques et proverbiales, qui peuvent se rencontrer dans les meilleurs auteurs, tant anciens que modernes. Le tout pour faciliter aux etranqers, et aux Francais m@mes, 1 1 intelligence de toutes sortes de livres. New rev. ed.. Lyon: Chez les Heritiers de Beringos Fratres, a l'Enseiqne d'Agrippa; 1735.

LeRoux de Lincy. Le livre des proverbs francais pr^c^d^ de recherches historiques sur les provd^bs francais et leur emploi dans la literature du moyen -ggS^et de la renaissance. 2 Vols., 2nd rev. ed., 1859; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968.

Letheve, Jacques. Impressionistes et symbolistes devant la presse. Paris: A. Colin, [1959].

Levi, Frederic. Vocabulaire h^breu-francais d'apres les meilleures sources tant anciennes qtle modernes avec toutes les inflexions des substantifs, des adjectifs et des propositions, les diff^rentes voix des verbes et leur regimes. Paris: L'imprimerie Jouast and Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1867.

Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie. 8 Vols., Rome: Herder, 1968-1976. 247

Leymarie, Jean and Michel Melot. The Graphic Works of the Impressionists; Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Sisley. Translated by Jane Brenton, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1972.

Lis, Michel et Michel Barbier. Dictionnaire du qai parler: 4500 expressions trachtiennelle et populaires. Editeurs Menges, 1980.

Littre, Emile. Dictionnaire de la lanque francais. 7 Vols.. Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1^56.

Lloyd, Christopher. Camille Pissarro. Geneva: Skira, 1981.

"Camille Pissarro and Hans Holbein the Younger," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 117, no. 872 (Nov., 1975), pp. 722-726.

"Camille Pissarro: Drawings or Prints?" Master draw ing s , Vol. 18, no. 3 (1980 ), pp. 264-268.

"Camille Pissarro: Towards a Reassessment, Art International, Vol. 25, nos. 1-2 (1982), p. 59-66.

"The Literature of Art...Camille Pissarro, a Biography," (review of Adler) Burlington Magazine, Vol. 120, no. 907 (Oct., 1978), pp. 683-684.

Lucie Smith, E. "The Pissarro Family," Art and Artists, Vol. 12, no. 9 (Jan., 1978), pp. 8-13.

Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated in 2 vols. by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Le guide des egares, traite de theologie et de philosophie par Molse Ben Maimoun dit Ma^imonide. Translated by S. Munk in 3 vols.. 1856; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1960.

Male, Emile. The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century. Translated by Dora Nussey. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958.

Maloux, Maurice. Dictionnaire des proverbes, sentences, et maximes. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1960. 248

Martin-Achard, Robert. Essai biblique sur les f£tes d 1 Israel. Geneva: Editions Labor et Fides, 1974.

Mauclair, Camille. L1impressionnisme: son histoire, son esthetique, ses mafrtres. Paris: Librairie de l'art ancien et moderne, 1904.

Maury. Croyances et l^qendes du moyen cEqe. Paris, 1896.

Meadmore, W. S. Lucien Pissarro: un coeur simple. London: Constable & Company Ltd., 1962.

Meier-Graefe, Julius. Impressionisten: Guys, Manet, van Gogh, Pissarro, Cezanne. Munich: R^ Piper & Co., 1907.

Du moderne impressionismus. Berlin: Julius Bard editeur, 1903.

Mellerio, Andre. L'exposition de 1900 et l'art impressionniste. Paris: H. Floury, editeur, 1900.

Mellerio, Andre. Le mouvement id^aliste en peinture. Paris: H. Floury editeur, 1896.

Le menagier de Paris, traite^ de morale et d'economie domestique compost vers 1393, par un bourgeois parisien. 2 Vols.. 1846; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1981.

Midrash Rabbah. Translated and edited by Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman and Maurice Simon. 10 Vols. London: The Soncino Press, 1939.

"Milestones in French Painting," Burlington Magazine. Vol. 75, no. 436 (July, 1939), p. 38.

Miller, Naomi. French Renaissance Fountains. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977.

Mirbeau, Octave. Des artistes. Premiere serie, 1885- 1896. Peintre et sculpteurs: Delacroix, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, J. F. Raffaelle, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Rodin, etc.. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, editeurs, 1922. 249

Moore, George. Modern Painting. London: Walter Scott, Limited, 1893.

Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters. Dublin: Maunsel ed., 1906.

Muirhead, Findlay and Marcel Monmaiche. North-Western France. London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1932.

Nerval, Gerard de. La boheme galante. 1856; rpt. in Les oeuvres completes de Gerard de Nerval, Vol. 10. Paris: Francois Bernouard, 1927.

Les filles du feu. 1854; rpt. in Les oeuvres completes de Gerard de Nerval, Vol. 6. Paris: Francois Bernouard, 1927.

Neugass, Fritz. "Camille Pissarro," Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, Vol. 67 (Oct., 1930-Mar., 1931), pp. 153-164.

Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother. Princeton, N.J., 1963.

Neuss, Paula. The Creacion of the World. A Critical Edition and Translation. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1983.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition. Dec. 12, 1974-Feb. 19, 1975.

N-chlin, Linda. "Camille Pissarro, the Unassuming Eye," Art News, Vol. 64, no. 2 (April, 1965), pp. 24-27 and 59-62.

Noel du Fail. Oeuvres facetieuses. [Propos rustiques, 1547. Contes d'Eutropel, 1585]. Revues sur les editions originales et accompagnees d'une introduction, de notes et d'un index philologique, historique et anecdotigue par. J. Assezat. Paris, 1874.

Nicholson, Benedict. "The Anarchism of Camille Pissarro," The Arts, No. 2 (1947), pp. 43-51. 250

Oudiette, Charles. Dictionnaire topographique des environs de Paris. 2nd rev. ed. Paris: Chez l'auteur, 1817.

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Artists, Writers, Politics: Camille Pissarro and His Friends. Cataloged by Anne Thorold, 1980.

Panckouche, Andre Joseph. Dictionnaire des proverbes francais, et des factons de parler comique, burlesques et familigres, etc., avec 1 'explication, et les Etymologies des plus av^rfes. Paris: Chez Savoye, 17 58.

Panofsky, Dora and Irwin Panofsky. Pandora's Box: Changing Aspects of a Mythological Symbol. New York: Pantheon, 1962.

Patai, Raphael. The Hebrew Goddess. Philadelphia: KTAV, 1976.

Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi*s Commentary. Translated by Rev. M. Rosenbaum and Dr. A. M. Silbermann. Jerusalem: The Silbermann Family, 5733/1929.

Petit de Julleville, Louis. Histoire du theatre en France. Les myst^res. 2 Vols. Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1880.

Phillips, John A. Eve: The History of an Idea. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984.

Pissarro, Camille. Correspondence de Camille Pissarro. Tome I: 1865-1885. Edited and annotated by Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980.

Letters to his Son Lucien. Edited by L. Pissarro and John Rewald, Translated by Lionel Abel, 3rd rev. ed., enl. Santa Barbara, Ca.: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1981.

Pissarro, Ludovic Rodo et Lionello Venturi. Camille Pissarro. Son art, son oeuvre. 2 Vols. Paris: Paul Rosenberg, 1939. 251

Pommier, Adrien. Normandie. Paris: Editions Jacques Vautrain, 1946.

Pontoise, Musee de Pontoise. Camille Pissarro, Charles- Francois Daubigny, Ludovic Piette. Nov. 18, 1978- Feb. 8, 1979.

Camille Pissarro, sa famille, ses amis. Dec. 10, 1976-Feb. 28, 1977.

Les peintres des bords de l'Oise. Dec. 21, 1974- Mar. 22, 1975.

Pissarro et Pontoise. Nov. 22, 1980-Jan. 31, 1981.

Pool, David de Sola. Book of prayer according to the customs of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. New York: Union of Sephardic Congregations, 5696/1936.

The Traditional Prayer Book for Sabbath and Festivals. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, Inc., 1960.

Pool, Phoebe. Impressionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Prinz, Joachim. The Secret Jews. New York: Random House, Inc., 1973.

Quinze joies de mariage (Les). [1480]; rpt. Paris, 1858.

Ramban (Nachmanides). Commentary on the Torah. Genesis. Translated and annotated by Rabbi Dr. Charles B. Chavel. New York: Shilo Publishing House, Inc., 1971.

Rappaport, Angelo S. Myth and Legend of Ancient Israel. 3 Vols.. 1928; rpt. New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1966.

Reau, Louis. Iconographie de l'art chretian. 3 Vols. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1955-1959.

Reff, Theodore. "Cezanne's constructive stroke," Art Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn, 1962), pp. 214- 227. 252

"Copyists in the Louvre," Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, no. 4 (Dec., 1964), p. 552.

"Pissarro's Portait of Cezanne," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, no. 776 (Nov., 1967), pp. 626-633.

Reid, Martin. "Camille Pissarro: Three Paintings of London of 1871. What do They Represent?", Burlington Magazine, Vol. 119, no. 889 (April, 1977), pp. 253-261.

Reutersward, Oscar. "The 'Violetomania' of the Impressionists," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 9, no. 2 (Dec., 1950), pp. 106-110.

"The Accentuated Brush Stroke of the Impressionists," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 9, no. 3 (Mar., 1952), pp. 273-278.

Rewald, John. Camille Pissarro. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1954.

"Camille Pissarro: Advice to a Young Artist," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Vol. 23, 6th series(April, 1943), pp. 237-250.

"Camille Pissarro as Seen by Himself Through his Unpublished Letters, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Vol. 24, 6th series (1943), pp. 107-122.

Camille Pissarro au Musee du Louvre. Paris: Editions Marion, 1939.

"Camille Pissarro: His Work and Influence," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 72, no. 423 (June, 1938), pp. 280-290.

"Camille Pissarro in the West Indies," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Vol. 22, 6th series (1947), pp. 57-60.

"Extraits du journal inedites de Paul Signac. I. 1894-1895," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Vol. 36, 6th series (1949), p. 97-128. 253

The History of Impressionism. 4th rev. ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973.

Paul Cezanne: A Biography. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.

"Pissarro's Paris and His France: The Camera Compares," Art News, Vol. 42, no. 2 (Mar. 1-14, 1943), pp. 14-17.

Post-Impressionism, from van Gogh to Gauguin. 3rd rev. ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1978.

"Theo van Gogh, Goupil and the Impressionists," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Vol. 81, 6th series (Jan., 1973 and Feb., 1973), pp. 1-64 and 65-108.

Rhys, John. Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1901.

Rodo, Ludovic. "The Etched and Lithographed Work of Camille Pissarro," The Print-Collectors Quarterly, Vol. 9 (Oct., 1922), pp. 275-301.

Rolland, Eugene. Faune populaire de la France: noms vulgares, dictons, proverbs, legendes, contes et superstitions. 13 Vols. 1877-1911; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967.

Flore populaire de la France ou histoire naturelle des plantes dans leurs rapports avec la linguistique et le folklore. 11 Vols. 1896-1914; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967.

Recueil de chansons populaires. 6 Vols. 1883; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967.

Rimes et jeux de l'enfance. Rpt. Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967.

Rosensaft, J. B. "Le n^o-impressionisme de Camille Pissarro," L'oeil, No. 223 (Feb., 1974 ), pp. 52-57 and 75.

Rothenstein, John. "The Tate Gallery," The Studio, Vol. 131 (1946), pp. 161-176. 254

Rothschild, Le Baron James de. Le Mistere du Viel Testament. 6 Vols. Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot et Cie, 1878-1891.

Roy, Maurice. "L 'Eva Prima Pandora,1 tableau de Jehan Cousin pere, aujourd'hui au musee du Louvre," Artists et monuments de la Renaissance en France. Recherches nouvelles et documents inedits. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honore Champion, 1929, p. 56-64.

Ruhemann, Helmut. "Methods of the Masters. II. Impressionists and Post-Impressionists," The Studio, Vol. 45 (1953), pp. 33-41.

Saintyves, P. Corpus du folklore prehistorique en France et dans les colonies frangaises. 3 Vols. Paris: Nourry, 1934-1936. ^

Sand, George. Legendes rustiques. Paris: Calmann-Levy, editeurs, 1877.

Promenades autour d'un village. Paris: Calmann- Levy, 1866.

Schuhl, Moise. Sentences et proverbs du Talmud et du Midrasch suivis du traite d'Aboth. Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1878.

Sebillot, Paul. Le folk-lore de France. 4 Vols. 1904- 1907; rpt. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1968.

Le paganisme contemporain chez les peuples celto- lateris. Paris: Doin, Encyclopedie scientifique, 1908.

Sebillot, Paul-Yves. Le folklore de la Bretagne. 2 Vols. Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1968.

Shapiro, Barbara Stern. Review of Brettel & Lloyd. Master Drawings, Vol. 20, no. 4 (1982), pp. 393-398.

Shapiro, Meyer. "Nature of Abstract Act," Marxist Quarterly, Vol. I, no. 1 (Jan.-March, 1937), pp. 77- 98; rpt. New York: Greenwood Reprint Corporation, 1968. Shiff, Richard, "Review of Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Correspondence de Camille Pissarro (Tome I, 1865- 1885); Richard Brettell and Christopher Lloyd, A Catalogue of the Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Christopher Lloyd, Camille Pissarro; London, Arts Council of Great Britain, and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Camille Pissarro; His Life and Work," The Art Bulletin, Vol. 66, no. 4 (Dec., 1984), pp. 681-690.

Shikes, Ralph E. and Harper, Paula. Pissarro; His Life and Work. New York; Horizon Press, 1980.

Smith, William and Henry Wace. Dictionary of Christian Biography. 4 Vols. Murray, 1877-1887.

Smith, William Robertson. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites; The Fundamental Institutions. 3rd ed. Philadelphia: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1969.

Succos. Its Significance, Laws, and Prayers. A Presentation Anthologized from Talmudic and Traditional Sources. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah Publications, Ltd., 1982.

Sutton, Denys. "Cross-Currents in Nineteenth Century French Painting," A p o l l o , Vol. 113, no. 230 (1981), pp. 244-254.

Tabarant, Adolphe. Pissarro. Translated by J. Lewis May. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925.

Theuriet, Andrei La vie rustique en France. Paris: Launett et Cie, 1888.

Thistlewood, David. Review of Brettell & Lloyd, British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 21, no. 4 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 378-380.

Thomson, Belinda. "Camille Pissarro and Symbolism: Some Thoughts Prompted by the Recent Discovery of an Annotated Article," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 124, no. 946 (1982), pp. 14-23.

Thomson, Richard. Review of Brettel and Lloyd. Catalogue..., Burlington Magazine, Vol. 124, no. 948 (Mar., 1982) pp. 163-164. 256

"Drawings by Camille Pissarro in Manchester Public Collections/' Master Drawings, Vol. 18, no. 3 (1980), pp. 257-263.

"Pissarro and the Figure," Connoissuer, Vol. 207, no. 833 (1981), pp. 187-190.

Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk Literature; A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exampla, Faliaux, Jes Books, and Local Legends. 6 Vols., rev. and enl. ed. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1966.

Thorold, Anne. "The Pissarro collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford," Burlington Magazine, Vol. 120, no. 907 (1978), pp. 642-645.

Tolkowsky, Samuel. Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits. London: John Bale, Sons and Curnow, Ltd., 1938.

Tolnay, Charles de. Michelangelo. 2 Vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945.

Trou, Denis [M. l'Abbe]. Recherches historiques, arch^ologiques et biographiques sur la ville de Pontoise. 1841; rpt. Marseilles: Laffitte Reprints, 1977.

Venturi, Lionello. Les Archives de L 1impressionnisme. Lettres de Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley et Autres. Memoires de Paul Durand-Ruel. Documents. 2 Vols. Paris: Durand-Ruel, 1939.

"Impressionism," Art in America and Elsewhere; An Illustrated Magazine Published Quarterly. Vol. 24 1936), pp. 95-110.

Impressionists and Symbolists: Manet, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec. Translated by Francis Steegmuller. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons., 1950.

Warner, Marina. Alone of All Her Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. 257

Weisberg, Gabriel P. "Pissarro: A Creative Dynamo Who Continually Renewed Himself," Art News, Vol. 80, no. 7 (Sept., 1981), pp. 128-131.

White, Barbara Ehrlich, editor. Impressionism in Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978.

White, Harrison C. and Cynthia. Canvases and Careers. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965.

Zola, Emile. Mes haines. Causeries litteraires et artistiques. Mon Salon (1866). 1867; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1979. FIGURES

Figure 1. Le printemps (Spring). 1872. P&V 183f 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas. (Source for illustration other than Pissarro and Venturi catalogue will be noted in parentheses.)

Fiaure 2. L'ete (Summer). ]872. P&V 184, 55 x 120 cm, 21.65 x 47.24 in., oi 3 or. canvas.

258 259

Figure 3. L1automne (Autumn). 1872. PM 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on car

Figure 4. L'hiver (Winter). 1872. P&V 186, 55 x 130 cm, 21.65 x 51.18 in., oil on canvas. 260

Figure 5. Portal of the Virgin, Northern portal on west facade, Ncstre-Dame, Paris, 12th century. (Bottineau, N&tre-Dame de Paris and the Sainte-Chapelle, figs. 61-62). 261

Figure 6. The Limbourg Brothers, February, fol. 2v, The trfes riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 3). 262

»•>**

Figure 7. The Limbourg Brothers, March, fol. 3v, The tres riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 4). 263

UUrmit

' ’vv ^

A '

Figure 8. The Limbourg Brothers, July, fol. 7v, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 8). 264

Figure 9. The Limbourg Brothers, August, fol. ®v ' The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 9). 265

*******

Figure 10. The Limbourg Brothers, October, fol. lOv, The tr£s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 11). 266

Figure 11. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Spring. (The Earthly Paradise). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 242).

Figure 12. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons; Summer. (Ruth and Boaz). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 243). 267

Figure 13. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons: Autumn. (The Spies with the Grapes of the Promised Land). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 244).

Figure 14. Nicolas Poussin, The Four Seasons: Winter. (The Flood). 1660-64. 118 x 160 cm, 46-1/2 x 63 in., (A. Blunt, Mellon Lectures, no. 245). 268

Figure 15. Jean Francois Millet, Spring. 1868- 73. 86 x 111 cm, 33.^6 x 43.70 in., oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 68). 269

Figure 16. Jean Francois Millet, Summer, the Buckwheat Harvest, 1868-74. 85 x 111 cm, 33.46 x 43.70 in., unfinished oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 69). Figure 17. Jean Frangois Millet, Autumn. 1868- 74. 85 x 110 cm, 33.46 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 70). 271

Figure 18. Jean Francois Millet, Winter. 1868- 74. 78.7 x 97.8 cm, 10.98 x 38.50 in., unfinished oil on canvas. (G. Pollock, Millet, no. 71). 272

Ficjure 19. Portrait de Cezanne (Portrait of Cezanne). 1874. P&V 293, 73 x 60 cm, 28.74 x 23.62 in., oil on canvas. Figure 20. "Le soir soleil couchant," Sketchbook III, 6 8 B, in Brettell and Lloyd, Catalogue of Drawings by Camille Pissarro, pencil on paper. 274

Figure 21. L'hiver ^ Montfoucault (Effet de neige), (Winter at Montfoucault. Snow effect). 1875. P&V 328, 114 x 110 cm, 44.88 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas. 275

Figure 22. L'automne (Etang de Montfoucault), (Autumn. Pool of Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 329, 114 x 110 cm., 44.88 x 43.31 in., oil on canvas. 276

L'etanq de Montfoucault. Effet ool of Montfoucault, Effect of .874. P&V 275, 60 x 73 cm, 23.62 x oil on canvas. 277

Figure 24. L'^tang de Montfoucault/ (Pool of Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 317, 60 x 73 cm., 23.62 x 28.74 in., oil on canvas.

Figure 25. La mere au canards a Montfoucault, (The Duck Pond at Montfoucault). 1875. P&V 318, 46 x 55 cm, 18.11 x 21.65 in., oil on canvas. 278

Ture 26. I/abreuvoir de Montfoucault, (The nkinq Pond at Montfoucault). 1875. P&V , 73 x 92 cm, 28.74 x 36.22 in., oil on 'as.

Figure 27. Berger et laveuses a Montfoucault, (Shepherd and Washerwomen at Montfoucault~n 1881. P&V 535, 65 x 81 cm, 25.59 x 31.89 in., oil on canvas. 279

Figure 28. Laveuses au bord de l 1Oise, (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise). 1878. P&V 456, 32 x 41 cm, 12.60 x 16.14 in., oil on canvas.

Figure 29. Laveuses, (Washerwomen). ca. 1881. P&V 1556, 22 x 29 cm, 8 . 6 6 x 11.42 in., pastel. 280

Figure 30. Laveuses au bord de l 1Oise, Pontoise, (Washerwomen on the Bank of the Oise, Pontoise). c a . 1880-81. P&V 1617, 15 x 53 cm, 5.91 x 20.87 in., fan.

Figure 31. Laveuses et paysan, (Washerwomen and Peasant). ca. 1881. P&V 1352, 39 x 49 cm, 15.35 x 19.29 in., gouache. ?> 1

Figure 32. La cueillette des ponunes (The Harvesting of Apples). Ca. 1884-85. P&V 1665r 19 x 39 cm., 7.5 x 15.4 in., oil on faience.

Figure 33. La recolte des ponunes de terre (The Gathering of Potatoes). C a . 1884-85. P&V 1666, 19 x 18 cm., 7.5 x 7.1 in., oil on faience. 282

Figure 34. Paysanne dans un champ de choux (Peasantwoman in a Cabbage Field). Ca. 1884- 85. P&V 1667, 19 x 18 cm., 7.5 x 7.1 in., oil on faience.

Figure 35. La Saint Martin a Pontoise (Saint Martin's Day at Pontoise). C a . 1884-85. P&V 1668, 19 x 39 cm., 7.5 x 15.4 in., oil on faience. Figure 36. La cueillette des pommgg Annie Harvest). 1886. P&V 695, 128 x 128 cm., 50.4 x 50.4~In., oil on canvas. (Boston, Pissarro, cat. no. 64). Figure 37. La cueillette des pommes (The Harvest of Apples). 1881. P&V 545, 65 x 54 cm., 25.6 x 21.3 in., oil on canvas.

Figure 38. La cueillette des pommes (The Harvest of Apples). 1882. P&V 1363, 50 x i cm., 19.7 x 25.6 in., tempera. 285

Figure 39. Hugo van der Goes, Fall of Man, circa 1468-70. 13-1/4 x 9 in., Panel of divided diptych. (Cuttler, Northern Painting, fig. 183). 286

Figure 40. Limbourg Brothers. The Fall of Man, f ol . 25V, The tr^s riches heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, 1416, manuscript illumination. (Facsimile, Plate 25). 287

Figure 41. Les sarcleuses, Pont.oise (Female Weeders, Pontoise). 1882. P&V 563, 63 x 77 cm., 24.8 x 30.3 in., oil on canvas. 288

Figure 42. Lucas van Leyden, Venus and Cupid. 1528. 16.2 x 11.5 cm., 6.4 x 4.5 in., (Hollstein, X, p. 157). 289

Figure 43. Frans Menton, D a n a ’d Receiving the Golden Rain. 1570-1615. 21.3 x 26.7 cm., 8.4 x 10.5 in. (Hollstein, XIII, p. 35).

Figure 44. Jan Saenredam, Temptation of Man. 1597. 22.1 x 14.1 cm., 8.7 x 5.6 in. (Hollstein, XXIII, No. 8 , p. 10). Figure 45. H. Hondius I, Gustus. 1573-ca. 1649. 10.5 x 7.5 cm., 4.1 x 3.0 in. (Hollstein, IX, p. 8 6 ).

Figure 46. Jacob de Backer, Taste. Circa 1560-1590. 14.7 x 19.7 cm., 5.8 x 7.8 in. (Hollstein, I, p. 52). 291

Figure 47. Lucas van Leyden, The Fall of Man. 1530. 18.9 x 24.7 cm., 7.4 x 9.7 in. (Hollstein, X, p. 62). 292

Figure 48. Antonio Canova, Paolina Borghese as Venus Victorius. 1804-1808. Length, 200 cm., 78.6 in., marble. (Licht, Canova, fig. 109). 293

Figure 49. Antonio Canova, Dirce. 1819-1822. 96 x 175 x 78 cm., 37.4 x 68.9 x 30.6 in., marble. (Licht, Canova fig. 220). 294

Figure 50. Jacques-Louis David, Madame Recamier. 1800. (Licht, Canova, fig. 111).

Figure 51. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque. 1814. (Licht, Canova, fiq. 112). 295

Figure 52. Eugene Delacroix, Femmes d'Algers dans leur appartement (Women of Algiers in Their Apartment). 1834. 180 x 229 cm., 71 x 90-1/4 in., oil on canvas. (Poole, Delacroix, Plate 20). Figure 53. Eugene Delacroix, Juive d 1Alger 1838 (3rd state). 11.1 x 17.5 cm., 4.4 x 6 in., etching. (Delteil, III, No. 101). 297

Figure 54. Eugene Delacroix, Femmes d 1Alger. 1833 (1st state). 16.0 x 22.2 cm., 6.3 x 8.7 in., etching. (Delteil, III, no. 97). 298

Figure 55. Le gouter, enfant et jeune paysanne au repos (The Snack, Child and Young Female Peasant Resting). 1882. P&V 553, 60 x 73 cm., 23.6 x 28.7 in., oil on canvas.

Figure 56. Ramasseuse d'herbe (Gathering of Herbs). 1882. P&V 1368, 36 x 17 cm., 14.2 x 6.7 in., gouache. Figure 57. Crispin Du Pas, Elle est tombe, j'ai vu son... (She Has Fallen, I Saw Her... 18th C. Engraving (Flandrin, Les amours paysannes, fig. 26). 300

Figure 58. La recolte des pommes de terre (The Harvest of Potatoes). 1872. P&V 166, 43 x 54 cm., 16.9 x 21.3 in., oil on canvas.

Figure 59. La recolte des pommes de terre. 1874. P&V 295, 33 x 41 cm., 13.0 x 16.1 in., oil on canvas. 301

Figure 60. La recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of Potatoes). 1880. P&V 1338, 27 x 49 cm., 10.6 x 19.3 in., gouache.

Figure 61. La recolte des pommes de terre (Harvest of Potatoes). 1882. P&V 1369, 30 x 22 cm., 11.8 x 8.7 in., gouache. 302

(Peasant Womfll^pa t t a c h i n o s a marmotte 1 ^ T - P&V 1370— LL ! ^ 9 M a r m o t s gouache. ' 56 x Jb <=«., 22.1 x l l . 2 in.,

Figure 63. Paysannes dans les champs, Pontoise (Peasant Women in the Fields, Pontoise). 1880. P&V 515, 46 x 65 cm., 18.11 x 25.59 in., oil on canvas.