2-748-306 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Wooded Landscape at LHermitage, Pontoise, 1879. Camille Pissarro, a painter fascinated by colour, was also a superb printmaker. The richness and inventiveness of his technical vocabulary enabled him to create prints that fully reflected his painterly goals. This skill is particularly evident in Wooded Landscape at l’Hermitage, Pontoise, a landscape that, like so much of his work, conveys the pleasantness of the countryside and simple, rural life. In 1879, Pissarro met Edgar Degas who introduced him to inventive and unorthodox printmaking techniques. Degas conceived of the idea of publishing a journal of original prints, Le Jour et la nuit , and although this project failed, Pissarro produced Wooded Landscape for it. Inspired by Degas’s experimental attitude, Pissarro combined soft-ground etching and aquatint to describe the scene in layers of tone. While the subtle gradations of black and white produce an overall luminosity, the patterns created by interwoven tree trunks and branches, and the variety of printed textures, suggest a rippling movement.