The Hermitage at Pontoise

The Hermitage district of Pontoise — the hillside area above the town known as l'Hermitage — was one of Pissarro's primary working locations in the late 1860s. This 1867 painting, now at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, shows the farmhouses and gardens of this semi-rural hillside district with a directness and spatial clarity that distinguishes his early Pontoise work. The Hermitage's houses, gardens, and winding paths appear in numerous Pissarro canvases across the decades of his engagement with Pontoise, each iteration finding something new in the familiar terrain.

The Guggenheim's 1867 canvas is relatively large for an early Pissarro outdoor study, suggesting it was intended from the outset as a serious exhibition work rather than a preliminary sketch. The paint handling is more deliberate than his later Impressionist work, building the hillside's surfaces with careful attention to the fall of light on different materials.