Landscape with Farm Buildings and Palm Trees

This 1856 National Art Gallery painting from Pissarro's St. Thomas period shows a Caribbean farm with buildings, tropical trees including palms, and the kind of agricultural settlement that characterized the Danish colonial landscape of the island. The presence of palm trees immediately distinguishes the work from anything in the later European oeuvre and reminds us that Pissarro spent his first twenty-five years in the Caribbean before arriving in France. The farm buildings and domestic landscape foreshadow the agricultural subjects of his French career, but rooted in a wholly different natural and cultural world.

Early technique with careful tonal organization — the farm buildings rendered in warm ochre and white against the deep tropical green of the surrounding trees. The palms are treated with specific attention to their distinct silhouette. The light is warmer and more direct than anything in Pissarro's French landscapes, appropriate to the tropical setting.