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Morning Sunlight on the Snow, Éragny-sur-Epte

Camille Pissarro (French (born in the Danish West Indies), 1830–1903)
1895

Medium/Technique Oil on canvas
Dimensions 82.3 x 61.6 cm (32 3/8 x 24 1/4 in.)
Credit Line The John Pickering Lyman Collection—Gift of Miss Theodora Lyman
Accession Number19.1321
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
A peasant woman trudges through the snow, her back to the viewer, arms taut with the weight of two buckets. This painting combines Pissarro’s sympathy for rural labor with his interest in winter landscapes, a subject he returned to again and again, delighting in the infinitely varied shades of white, from pearl pink to ice blue. He likely painted this scene from the window of his studio—a converted barn in the tiny village of Éragny, fifty miles outside Paris—where he worked directly from nature while protected from the elements.

InscriptionsLower left: C. Pissarro. 95
ProvenanceApril 10, 1895, sold by the artist to Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York (stock no. 1789) [see note 1]; 1910, sold by Durand-Ruel to John Pickering Lyman (b. 1847 – d. 1914), Portsmouth, NH [see note 2]; by descent to his sister, Theodora Lyman (b. 1852 – d. 1942), Portsmouth; 1919, gift of Theodora Lyman to the MFA. (Accession Date: September 18, 1919)

NOTES:
[1] According to a letter from Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Catalogue Raisonné Camille Pissarro, to the MFA (2003). The painting was previously thought to have been dated 1894 and sold to Durand-Ruel in that year.

[2] According to notes in the MFA curatorial file.