Meadow at Éragny (Prairie à Éragny)

Camille Pissarro participated in each of the eight Impressionist exhibitions held
in Paris between 1874 and 1886, the only artist in the circle to do so. Having met Paul Signac and Georges Seurat in 1885, however, he revised his technique and began to produce work based on the principles of colour division. Pissarro had moved to the village of Éragny, northwest of Paris, with his family in 1884, and it was there that he spent the last two decades of his life. This painting is distinctive for its shimmering luminosity, the result of the artist’s fresh palette and his masterly control of his brushwork. Dots and dashes of contrasting hues are placed side by side, blending optically into more unified patches of textured colour when viewed from a distance. Through a careful chromatic analysis, Pissarro captures the hazy stillness of a rural meadow.

Meadow at Éragny also conveys a sense of pictorial idealism. Pissarro believed
that the search for unity was the goal to which an artist should aspire, and in an exhibition of Japanese art held in 1883 he witnessed the harmony and grandeur for which he aimed. In its clarity and simplicity, Meadow at Éragny is progressively modern. The composition is geometrically ordered by horizontal bonds, reflecting Pissarro’s discussions with Paul Cézanne.

Tony Magnusson, Curator of European Art, 2016–18