22/03/2022
'One doesn’t have a minute to oneself', Camille Pissarro wrote to his wife during this trip to London in 1890. 'here are museums upon museums to visit, there’s plenty to occupy the person who wishes to study here. The parks are stunning in summer, one can work there without being bothered, and the countryside around London is stunning too.'
"Hyde Park, London", 1890 Camille Pissarro - Mia Feigelson Gallery
By Camille Pissarro (Danish-French, 1830-1903)
oil on canvas; 54 x 65 cm (21.3 x 25.6 in.)
© Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
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Context:
"Camille Pissarro arrived in London in late May of 1890, his first trip to the British capital since 1871. He would remain there for a little over a month, primarily to visit with his son Georges and tour the vast array of museums. During this late springtime sojourn he began six canvases depicting the visual pleasures of the city, from bridges over the Thames to various parks and gardens with hints of the urban landscape in the distance.
This was a far more pleasurable trip than Pissarro’s first visit to the city in the early 1870s, where he and his family fled during the Franco-Prussian war.
Staying, over the course of six months, in various residences in Upper and Lower Norwood, his fourteen paintings from early 1871 remain remarkably close in tone and style to those executed at Louveciennes both before and immediately after his time in London, save for a charming view of the Crystal Palace, now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Primrose Hill, Londres and the other five paintings from his 1890 trip bear a brighter and more uplifting tone than the 1871 pictures, celebrating the splendid vistas found around the city.
Pissarro would return to London in 1892 to oversee the marriage of his son Lucien. Taking a flat by Kew Gardens, he produced nine canvases, eight of which detail the delights found in that great park, with little thought or indication of the nearby city. A last stay in 1897, associated with Lucien’s sudden illness, led to a further seven paintings, geographically tied closely to his son’s residence by Bedford Park in West London.
Rotten Row, Hyde Park
"Rotten Row gets its name from 'route du roi', the King's road, because when King William III came to live at Kensington Palace, he took this route between the Palace and St James's.
Camille's shimmering painting of the scene, stayed in the family until 1951, when it was sold. However, in repainting the picture, Pissarro had overpainted his signature, so that only the two letters 'ro' were left alongside the date.
This meant that the later owners did not realise it was by the great man, and the painting was only rediscovered in 1988, when it identified by the artist's great-grandson, Joachim Pissarro"
— Nicholas Reed, 'Pissarro in West London: The Pissarro Family in Kew, Chiswick and Richmond' (1997)
