Return to the Village by Moonlight by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro
1830-1903 | French

Le Retour au village au clair de lune (Éragny)
(Return to the Village by Moonlight (Éragny))

Signed and dated "Camille Pissarro 86" (lower left)
Gouache and watercolor on silk laid down on paper

Among Camille Pissarro’s most unique artworks, this magnificent fan painting transforms a decorative object into a luminous Impressionist landscape. Displaying one of his iconic rural scenes under moonlight, this rare masterpiece offers one of the most singular and delightful ways of experiencing Pissarro’s celebrated vision.

Inspired by Japanese art and encouraged by Edgar Degas, Pissarro began experimenting with fans in the late 1870s, exhibiting 12 examples at the 1879 Impressionist exhibition alongside his paintings. What was once a decorative object became, in Pissarro’s hands, a highly inventive work of art. Other artists such as Gauguin and later Bonnard explored the fan format, but Pissarro perhaps embraced it most fully, helping transform the fan into one of the era’s most elegant experiments in modern composition.

In this example, the sweeping crescent shape of the fan offered Pissarro a compositional challenge unlike the traditional canvas, allowing him to unfold the scene in a panoramic arc. Under the luminous haze of a moonlit night, Pissarro’s figures move along a bucolic village path. The result is intimate yet expansive, offering Pissarro a place to reimagine the countryside he loved. 

Fewer than 100 fans by modern artists of this period are believed to exist, making each surviving example exceptionally rare. Comparable examples by Pissarro have gone for impressive sums at auction and now reside in leading museum collections worldwide, including the Musée d’Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Van Gogh Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. The importance of these works continues to receive institutional attention today, with the Musée d’Orsay showcasing an exhibition of 17 Impressionist fans this year. 

Known as the "Father of Impressionism," Camille Pissarro was the only painter to exhibit in all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions. His revolutionary approach to painting and thought-provoking compositions had a profound effect on his contemporaries and the future of modern art, and his works can be found in many of the most important museums and private collections throughout the world. 

This work will be included in the forthcoming Camille Pissarro Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.

Dated 1886

Paper: 17" high x 29" wide (43.2 x 73.7 cm)
Frame: 23" high x 32 3/4" wide x 2" deep (58.4 x 88.3 x 5.1 cm)

Provenance:
Madame de Kerrieu Collection, Paris
Her sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 8-9, 1898, lot 88
Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Jean & Marie-Louis d'Alayer (née Durand-Ruel) Collection, Paris (transferred from the above in 1940)
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 19, 1955, lot 22
Sale: Drouot Rive Gauche, Paris, June 18, 1976, lot 108
Sale: Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, May 14, 1997, lot 32
Galerie Charles & André Bailly, Paris (likely acquired at the above sale)
Private collection, acquired from the above in August 1997
M.S. Rau, New Orleans

Literature:
L.-R. Pissarro & L. Venturi, Camille Pissarro, son art – son oeuvre, Vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 1635 (Vol. II, illustrated pl. 309)
M-J. Pellé, Les Éventails de Camille Pissarro, Paris, 1990, no. 27 (illustrated p. 27; titled 'Le Départ du village, Eragny' and 'Le Chemin de l'atelier')
M-J. Pellé, "Vert Pissarro..." Impressions de Normandie et d'ailleurs, Luneray, 2000, no. 8 (illustrated p. 72)
J. Pissarro & C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Pissarro, Critical Catalogue of Paintings, Vol. I, Paris, 2005, p. 281 (titled 'The Path to the Studio')