PONTOISE & THE DAWN OF IMPRESSIONISM

Eleni Kyriacou

Sep 3

2 min read

My visit to Pontoise was completely unplanned. I found myself there as it was close to my accommodation which I had booked in order to visit Auvers-sur-Oise.

I was pleasantly surprised with how beautiful a village Pontoise was. The village was dotted with beautiful squares and lanes and had a hilly character creating beautiful viewpoints from various spots. Like most villages in France, the most notable landmark was a striking cathedral, facing a central square.

There was also however an aura to Pontoise, an aura that would set the tone for the following few stops of this tour. An aura emanating from beauty and the sense of knowing, knowing the historical significance of the place, as a source of inspiration for artists who have thrived there creatively. One senses this when wondering the same lanes and climbing the same steps as those past creators, the most notable, having painted there most prolifically being Camille Pissarro.

Pissarro lived and painted in Pontoise for the majority of years between 1866 and 1882. He created a substantial body of work including Pontoise, 1874. A museum in Pontoise is dedicated to him {the Camille Pissarro Museum} and a street and a local school are named after him {rue Camille Pissarro and Lycée Camille Pissarro}.

Me standing at a spot with a lovely viewpoint in Pontoise & Pontoise, 1874 by Pissarro

During this extraordinary period in art history when impressionism was flourishing, Pontoise and other villages in this broad region northwest of Paris were a major source of inspiration for not only Pissarro but many of his prominent contemporaries. Whilst in Pontoise Pissarro would invite his friends, the likes of Cézanne and Gaugin to visit, and they too painted there. Examples of these works by his friends are La Maison Rondest, circa 1874 by Cézanne and Jardin de Pissarro, 1881 by Gauguin.

The works of all three artists are distinctly impressionist, in that rather than being mere picturesque and visually faithful depictions, the hand of the individual artist is freer, painting with their own unique flair, fragmenting the world into painterly expressiveness and allowing the medium of paint and the painting process to take on its own life, for the very first time in history. By doing so the actual character of a place, the feel of the village and the mood can be captured in a way never captured before by painting, because we are not just looking at a depiction of Pontoise we are looking at Pissarro’s Pontoise, Cézanne’s Pontoise and Gauguin’s Pontoise. Each artist with their own sensibility, seeing the village through their own lense.