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1830-1903
LE COURS-LA-REINE, LA CATHÉDRALE NOTRE-DAME, ROUEN

measurements
54 by 65cm.

alternate measurements
21 1/4 by 25 5/8 in.

Painted in 1898.

signed C. Pissarro and dated 98 (lower right)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Louis Bernard, Paris (sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Collection de Monseiur Louis Bernard, 11th May 1901, lot 51)
Mrs Ernest Kanzler (sale: Christie, Manson & Woods Ltd., London, 1st July 1974, lot 2)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

LITERATURE

Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro & Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro. Son art - son ~uvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, no. 1044, catalogued p. 226; vol. II, no. 1044, illustrated pl. 210
Christopher Lloyd, 'Camille Pissarro and Rouen', in Studies on Camille Pissarro, London & New York, 1987, p. 93, mentioned notes 47 & 61
Stefano Roffo, Camille Pissarro, Genoa, 1993, illustrated in colour
Linda Doeser, The Life and Works of Pissarro, New York, 1994, illustrated in colour pp. 56-57
Joachim Pissarro & Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro. Catalogue critique des peintures, Paris, 2005, vol. III, no. 1218, illustrated in colour p. 761

NOTE

The present work was executed during Pissarro's fourth and final trip to Rouen, where he stayed between July and October 1898. Staying at the Grand Hotel de l'Angleterre overlooking the river Seine, Pissarro completed twenty paintings during the culmination of a love affair with the region that had begun in 1883. Having abandoned Divisionism eight years previously, Pissarro's series paintings in Rouen during the late 1890s demonstrate not only his continuing fascination with light but also his growing interest in movement and form. In Le Cours-la-Reine, la cathédrale Notre-Dame, Rouen, Pissarro depicted a view from the Cours-la-Reine facing the Ile Lacroix, with the cathedral silhouetted in the background. Capturing this scene on a warm, sunlit day, the artist delighted in depicting the light purple shadows and the reflection of the houses in the water.

Heavily influenced by Monet's series paintings of the Rouen Cathedral exhibited in 1895, Pissarro devoted himself to the riverscapes around the cathedral in an effusive and comprehensive re-evaluation of his relationship with Neo-Impressionism. 'The Rouen paintings marked a major change in [Pissarro's] art; their subject matter was completely different from his tranquil rural scenes. They captured a wide variety of movements organised into a unified composition and he liberated himself from the Neo-Impressionist techniques with these paintings by eliminating the "intermediate whites" from his palette and thinning out with turpentine the mineral oil medium with which he mixed his pigments. His hues were therefore purer and more transparent' (Ralph E. Shikes & Paula Harper, Pissarro, His Life and Work, London, 1980, p. 294).