| The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Camille Pissarro |
| Year | 1873 |
| Type | Oil painting oncanvas |
| Dimensions | 38 cm × 55.2 cm (15 in × 21.75 in) |
| Location | Indianapolis Museum of Art,Indianapolis |
The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise is an 1873oil painting byFrench artistCamille Pissarro, located in theIndianapolis Museum of Art, which is inIndianapolis,Indiana. It depicts the riverOise near the market town ofPontoise.[1]
Painted in the early days ofImpressionism, this rural landscape uses gently luminous colors and loose brushwork to capture the atmospheric conditions of a silvery-grey, overcast day. While the surface texture is sensuous, the firm compositional network, Pissarro's hallmark, locks the road, river, field, and sky together tightly. Encroaching on the French landscape are clear signs of industrialization: factory, smokestack, railroad, and barge.[2]
As a politically engaged artist, Pissarro had fled toLondon during theFranco-Prussian War. He settled in Pontoise in 1872, after it was safe to return. It was his period of purest Impressionism.[1] He painted a series of paintings along the Oise in 1873. Factories along the bank played a prominent role, a blatant intrusion of modernity into a landscape contemporaries were still depicting as unspoiled nature. This particular image downplays the factory compared to others in the sequence, relegating it to the background, but it is still a significant part of this humdrum section of riverbank on a grey, cloudy day. The variety of treatments he afforded the factory seems to say less about his feelings about that structure in particular than about the purpose of modern painting, which had a duty to incorporate contrasting elements that had traditionally been kept separate.[3]
The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise was purchased with the James E. Roberts Fund by theHerron School of Art in 1940, then remained with the IMA during the split. It currently hangs in the Norb & Ruth Schaefer, Sr. and Norb & Carolyn Schaefer Jr. Gallery and has the accession number 40.252.[4]
Media related toLes Bords de l'Oise près de Pontoise at Wikimedia Commons