{"id":1530,"date":"2026-05-16T23:59:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horscadre.paris\/la-bergere-the-pissarro-painting-that-took-twenty-nine-years-to-sell\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T22:43:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:43:56","slug":"la-bergere-the-pissarro-painting-that-took-twenty-nine-years-to-sell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horscadre.paris\/en\/la-bergere-the-pissarro-painting-that-took-twenty-nine-years-to-sell\/","title":{"rendered":"“La Berg\u00e8re” \u2014 the Pissarro painting that took twenty-nine years to sell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Paris, February 16, 1910<\/strong>. At Paul Durand-Ruel\u2019s gallery on Rue Laffitte, Isaac de Camondo<\/strong> \u2014a banker of Ottoman origin living in Paris and one of the greatest European collectors of his time\u2014purchased a painting created by Camille Pissarro twenty-nine years earlier<\/strong>, in 1881. The painting is titled *La Berg\u00e8re<\/em>*. It depicts a young peasant girl seated, her headscarf tied, wearing an apron, a stick in her hand, her gaze fixed downward. <\/p>\n\n

Camille Pissarro died on November 13, 1903. He has been buried at P\u00e8re-Lachaise Cemetery for seven years<\/strong>. He never knew that his *Berg\u00e8re*<\/em>, which had been deposited at Durand-Ruel\u2019s gallery the very year it was created and had traveled between Paris and New York for eighteen years, had finally found a buyer. Nor did he ever know thata year later, in 1911<\/strong>, that buyer would bequeath the work to the French government upon his death, bringing *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em> into the national collections\u2014first to the Louvre, then to the Mus\u00e9e du Jeu de Paume, and today to the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

This article recounts the extraordinary history of this painting: the circumstances of its creation in Pontoise in 1881, Degas\u2019s advice that encouraged Pissarro to paint figures, the twenty-nine-year wait at the Durand-Ruel galleries, and the Camondo bequest that brought it into France\u2019s national heritage.<\/p>\n\n

Pontoise, 1881<\/h2>\n\n

In the summer of 1881, Camille Pissarro was fifty-one years old. He had been living in Pontoise<\/strong> for nine consecutive years, in the house on Rue de l\u2019Hermitage where he had settled with his family\u2014his wife Julie Vellay and their six surviving children. C\u00e9zanne, his friend and disciple, came regularly to paint alongside him. Paul Gauguin, whom he had taken off the dole, also painted with him that summer, as did Armand Guillaumin<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

For the Impressionist movement, 1881 was a year of crisis<\/strong>. The sixth Impressionist exhibition, held in Paris in April, marked the departure of Monet, Renoir, and Sisley<\/strong> \u2014who preferred to return to exhibiting at the official Salon for commercial reasons. Pissarro, however, remained loyal to the collective principle. He participated in the exhibition. As always, he would be the only painter to remain a constant presence<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

It was against this backdrop that Pissarro began to steer his painting<\/strong> in a new direction. During the 1860s and 1870s, he had painted almost exclusively landscapes<\/strong> \u2014the countryside around Pontoise, the Oise River, vegetable gardens, orchards, and country roads. Beginning in 1881, he started placing figures of peasant men and women in the foreground<\/strong> of his compositions. *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em> is one of the first works in this new vein\u2014and probably the most accomplished of that first year of transition. <\/p>\n\n

The Painting \u2014 What It Depicts<\/h2>\n\n

La Berg\u00e8re<\/em> \u2014 also known by the titles Young Girl with a Wand<\/em><\/strong> and Seated Peasant Woman<\/em><\/strong> according to the official catalog entries of the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay\u2014is an oil on canvas<\/strong> measuring 81 centimeters high by 64.8 centimeters wide<\/strong> (with its frame, 101.2 \u00d7 85.7 cm). Vertical format. Signed and dated \u201cC. Pissarro 1881\u201d<\/strong> in the lower right corner. <\/p>\n\n

In the center of the composition, a young peasant girl<\/strong> is seated on a hillside at the Hermitage or in the immediate vicinity of Pontoise. She is wearing a dark dress<\/strong>, a light-colored apron<\/strong> tied at the waist, and a headscarf<\/strong>, and is holding a shepherd\u2019s staff<\/strong> in her right hand\u2014the traditional attribute of a shepherdess guiding her flock. According to the catalog raisonn\u00e9 by Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, the model has not been formally identified. The Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay simply states that she is a local girl, perhaps one of the many peasant women from Pontoise who posed for Pissarro during those years. <\/p>\n\n

The young woman\u2019s gaze is directed downward<\/strong>, to the left of the painting. The left half of her face is lit, while the right half is in shadow. The Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay\u2019s official entry summarizes her posture with two words in its thematic index: \u201cpensive\u201d<\/strong> and \u201csolitude.\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n

The background<\/strong> is rendered in a palette of dark greens and earthy browns. Indistinct vegetation\u2014tall grasses, branches, foliage\u2014surrounds the figure without situating her in a recognizable landscape. No horizon. No sky. No other figures. The peasant woman occupies almost the entire pictorial space. She\u2014and she alone\u2014is the subject.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

This frontal positioning of the human subject<\/strong>\u2014this subordination of the landscape<\/strong> to the figure\u2014was a departure for Pissarro in 1881. For twenty years, his paintings had placed the landscape in the foreground and human figures in the background. With *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em>, this relationship is definitively reversed. <\/p>\n\n

Degas’s Advice<\/h2>\n\n

Pissarro’s shift toward figure painting in 1881 was no accident. It was a direct result of advice he received from Edgar Degas<\/strong> in 1879\u20131880. <\/p>\n\n

In the definitive catalog raisonn\u00e9<\/strong> published in 2005 by Joachim Pissarro<\/strong>, the painter\u2019s great-grandson, and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts<\/strong>, a descendant of Paul Durand-Ruel, we find this valuable analysis:<\/p>\n\n

\u201cContrary to a long-standing clich\u00e9, Pissarro\u2014largely following Degas\u2019s lead\u2014cultivated the altered effect produced by memory; that is, he allowed time to pass before returning to his memories of immediate visual perceptions.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\u2014 Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts,<\/em> *Pissarro: A Critical Catalog of Paintings*, 2005*<\/p>\n\n

This observation is crucial. Pissarro, who until then had been a painter of immediate plein air<\/strong> scenes (painting what one sees while seeing it), shifted in 1880 toward a more complex<\/strong> approach under the influence of Degas: painting from memory<\/strong>, allowing time to distort and refine visual impressions. It was this method that allowed Pissarro to paint peasant women posing in his studio in Pontoise, drawing on memories and sketches made at various times, rather than requiring a shepherdess to remain motionless outdoors for hours on end. <\/p>\n\n

Degas, a leading painter of the Impressionist movement but with more classical aesthetic convictions than Monet or Renoir, had long advocated for the primacy of drawing and the human figure<\/strong> over landscape. He himself painted dancers, washerwomen, and horses\u2014figures in motion captured in a single moment. He saw that Pissarro, the quintessential peasant painter, could bring a radically new perspective<\/strong> to this tradition of the human figure: that of the rural world treated with the monumental dignity that academic painters reserved for mythological scenes. <\/p>\n\n

Pissarro took this advice to heart. Beginning in 1881, at least half of his output<\/strong> was devoted to depictions of peasant women, peasants, washerwomen, and market vendors. *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em> is one of the earliest and most powerful works in this new vein. <\/p>\n\n

A Peasant Woman at Rest<\/h2>\n\n

We should pause to consider one aspect of the painting that few popular articles highlight: the young shepherdess is not working<\/strong>. She is resting<\/strong>, motionless, seated, almost in a meditative state. This is a formal fact that can be observed directly in the composition. <\/p>\n\n

However, until 1881, 19th-century French rural painting\u2014drawing particularly on the legacy of Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet<\/strong> \u2014almost always depicted peasants at work<\/strong>: bent over the land, sowing, mowing, gleaning, washing, and hauling. Rural labor was treated as a permanent, almost ontological state. In Millet\u2019s work, the peasant is<\/strong> his labor. <\/p>\n\n

Pissarro reverses this portrayal. In his work from the 1880s, and particularly in *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em>, the peasant is depicted in his moments of leisure<\/strong> \u2014at rest, at a standstill, taking a break. This is a political vision<\/strong> of rural life, consistent with Pissarro\u2019s anarchist convictions, which shape his entire body of work. For him, work is not a perpetual curse: it is a human activity that must be balanced by times of rest<\/strong>, reflection, and leisure. The shepherdess gazing into the distance, her staff resting by her side, is not a decorative figure of idleness\u2014she is an affirmation that the peasant, like any human being, has a right to moments of his own<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

This philosophical divergence from Millet has been documented by modern art historians. But Pissarro does not express it in terms of opposition\u2014he simply embodies it in his painting. And *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em>(1881) is the most accomplished expression of this in his early period. <\/p>\n\n

Twenty-nine Years at the Durand-Ruel Galleries<\/h2>\n\n

Pissarro entrusted *La Berg\u00e8re*<\/em> to his regular dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel<\/strong> (1831\u20131922), almost as soon as the painting was completed. The official entry in the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay\u2019s catalog provides the complete provenance: <\/p>\n\n