Verger à Varengeville avec vache

Painted during a short stay in Varengeville, a quiet village in Normandy, where Pissarro stayed for a few weeks in the autumn of 1899, the present work testifies to the artist’s enchantment with its pastoral scenery. In September the artist wrote to his son Georges that he had left Éragny, where he had settled with his family, ‘I’ve taken up quarters at Varengeville, a pretty village thirty minutes from the sea, a wooded countryside abounding in motifs, shadowy roads, a landscapist’s country, rather well-fed, plenty of milk’ (quoted in J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Catalogue critique des peintures, vol. III, Paris, p. 797). The artist’s time in Varengeville resulted in eight paintings characterised by their unique portrayal of the stillness of the area’s farmsteads, tall beech trees, orchards, and the luminous spectacle created by late summer light.

The present work is an almost archetypal embodiment of a bucolic scene, achieved through the most painterly of means. This closely cropped composition portrays the lushness of nature at the precise moment when the brightness of the blades of grass becomes tinged with the more sombre ochre shades of autumn, evoking the stillness of experience that nature affords. Indeed, since moving from Paris to Éragny in 1884, Pissarro’s artistic concerns were led by reflections on the contrasts between the dazzling urban environments and the serenity of the countryside.

The visual qualities of the scene are celebrated in the short loose brushstrokes that highlight the individual leaves on the trees, the sways of the grass, the colour planes resulting from the long shadows cast by the tree crowns. There is a sense of harmony to the scene—the dynamic curves are set against the vertical planes of the garden, cottage and sky, and the multiplicity of shades extends within and across the elements, with the body of the cow appearing almost translucent allowing the light to shine through her. This late canvas also testifies to Pissarro’s return to the intuitiveness of Impressionism after his venturing out to explore the highly systematic Pointillism in the 1880s.

Verger à Varengeville avec vache marvellously exemplifies the technique of Pissarro’s final years, wherein the artistic means are once again led by the subject matter in favour of greater expressiveness. Celebrating the repose offered by nature, and a moment spent in utter enchantment, the present work is a superbly evocative synthesis of the scene’s visual and atmospheric qualities.