Nov 02, 2023 - Sale 2651

Sale 2651 - Lot 153

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
CAMILLE PISSARRO
Femme à la barrière.

Etching printed in sepia on cream laid paper, 1889. 163x109 mm; 6 1/2x4 1/4 inches, full margins. Sixth state (of 10). One of only 3 known lifetime impressions in this state, from a total of approximately only 30 lifetime impressions in all ten states combined. Initialed, titled and inscribed "imprimé par" and "No. 1—6e état" in pencil, lower margin. A superb, luminous, proof-like impression of this extremely scarce etching with uneven, crisp and inky plate edges.

Pissarro derived this etched composition, with the peasant woman at a gate, from an earlier oil on canvas, Bergère Rentrant des Moutons, 1886, now in an exhibition-sharing arrangement between the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art , University of Oklahoma, and the French National Museums (Pissarro/Snollaerts 819). The painting had once been owned by Raoul Meyer and stolen by the Nazis during the German occupation of Paris. Meyer's adopted daughter, Holocaust survivor Léone Meyer, was granted ownership of the painting in 2016, and rather than have it returned agreed to the shared exhibition arrangement so viewers in the United States and France could continue to see the work on public view.

Pissarro (1830-1903) gives the solitary peasant women in this etched scene a noble, stoic presence, highlighted by the rays of sun raking across her face and dress (unlike the woman in shadows in the oil of the subject), and in doing so underscores the influence of Jean-François Millet. Delteil 84.