Pissarro’s Village on a Hill-Top (c.1890)

Driving through Gascony last summer we came across an exhibition called The Simonow Collection, a group of works by varied artists from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries.1 In three of the works on display there was further evidence, if any more were needed, that every painter paints himself. The chances that all three would end up in the same collection using methods unknown to specialists are infinitessimal if these methods are only rarely used. They are, of course, very common indeed. The first was a drawing of Augustus John by Paul Helleu which I included in an entry Manet's Portrait of Courbet. Here is the second: a townscape by Camille Pissarro simply titled Village on a Hill-Top.

Pissarro, Village au sommet d'une colline (c.1890)

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Have you ever thought that copying landscapes all your life as the Impressionists were thought to have done would be rather boring? I have, and it would not be art either. It would be illustration because it would have no meaning nor resonance. 

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Left: Detail of Pissarro's Village; Center: Pissarro, Detail of Self-portrait (1873)

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Read the text here first and then click on the image to enlarge it. What no-one unfamiliar with this method will have noticed is that Pissarro's own self-portrait is included. His "beard" is in the bushes beneath the town, his "mouth" some dark shading, his "nose" a turret of the castle. His far "eye", the only one, is described by the curve of a lower eyelid and the eyeball by a dark patch.2 What makes this convincing is that the church's steeple rises from the center of Pissarro's mind as a sign of his divinity and unity with God.

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Pissarro, Village au sommet d'une colline (c.1890)

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For much of the twentieth century scholars believed that all the Impressionists did was describe light exactly as they saw it. More recent scholarship has questioned this belief but none have recognized that what distinguishes the great Impressionists from their lesser brethren is the same concept that unites them to the great masters: the description of their own creative thoughts.

The fertility of Pissarro's mind, symbolized here by nature, is what leads it to its union with the divine, symbolized by church and steeple. In this deceptively simple drawing the artist and his motif are one.

Notes:

 

2. The "eyeball" and "eyelid" do not seem to represent any recognizable feature of the landscape besides their own forms.

Original Publication Date on EPPH: 14 Apr 2011. | Updated: 0. © Simon Abrahams. Articles on this site are the copyright of Simon Abrahams. To use copyrighted material in print or other media for purposes beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Websites may link to this page without permission (please do) but may not reproduce the material on their own site without crediting Simon Abrahams and EPPH.