The Hermitage at Pontoise

Plain village houses cluster on a hillside near Pontoise, a few peasants going about their day along the road, the whole scene built up in solid, earthy blocks of color under a wide sky. Camille Pissarro, the steady elder of the Impressionists, painted the ordinary French countryside without prettifying it, giving humble rural architecture a sturdy, almost structural weight. Now in the Guggenheim, the Hermitage at Pontoise shows his early mastery of landscape - unglamorous, deeply observed, and quietly monumental, the work of a painter who found his subject in the real, working land.