2-727-659 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Edge of the Woods Near LHermitage, Pontoise, 1879. Pissarro painted this monumental landscape when he was desperately poor and struggling to sell his paintings. It depicts a man slumbering in the sundappled backwoods of the Hermitage, a rural village near Pontoise, where the artist had been living since 1872. Restricting his pallette to pure hues, Pissarro applied brushstrokes in systematic diagonal patterns, producing an effect that he likened to knitting. This canvas was included in the fourth Impressionist exhibition of 1879.