The Harvesters' Rest by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro
1830-1903 | French

Le Repos des moissonneurs
(The Harvesters' Rest)

Stamped "C.P." (lower left)
Gouache, watercolor and charcoal on paper

Among Camille Pissarro’s most unique artworks, this fan painting transforms a decorative object into a luminous Impressionist landscape. Displaying one of his iconic rural scenes, this rare masterpiece, entitled The Harvesters' Rest, 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 also 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 landscape in a panoramic arc. The harvesters lounge under the shade of a tree, drawing the viewer into the foreground while the farm fades into the distance. 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.

Circa 1891

Paper: 12 3/4” high x 23 3/4” wide (32.4 x 60.3 cm)
Frame: 14 3/4” high x 25 3/4” wide x 1” deep (37.5 x 65.4 x 2.5 cm)

Provenance:
Julie Pissarro Collection, Étude-sur-Epte (the artist's wife; by descent from the artist circa 1903)
Estate sale of the above, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 8, 1928, no. 262
Dr. Georges Viau Collection, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 8, 1936, lot 39
Sale: Hôtel des ventes, Honfleur, July 15, 1989, lot 158
Sale: Sotheby's, London, November 29, 1989, lot 404
Private collection, acquired at the above sale through Leggatt Brothers, London
M.S. Rau, New Orleans

Literature:
J. Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, New York, 1993, no. 218 (illustrated p. 189; titled 'The Picnic')

Exhibited:
Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Centenaire de la Naissance de Camille Pissarro, February - March 1930, no. 49 (titled 'Les Moissonneurs; éventail')