Chestnut Vendor, St. Martin's Day Fair (Pontoise) (1878): Art, History and Details

Chestnut Vendor, St. Martin's Day Fair (Pontoise) (1878) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Pissarro was essentially a landscape artist, and the majority of his prints were landscapes with peasant figures. These images never showed workers exhausted by their labors, for Pissarro was primarily interested in conveying the pleasantness of the countryside and simple, rural life. In this scene of the chestnut vendor, the placing of figures in the foreground reflects the flat design and two-dimensional concept of space characteristic of the Japanese art that was influencing many French artists at the time.

Object facts

• Title: Chestnut Vendor, St. Martin's Day Fair (Pontoise)
• Date: 1878
• Creator attribution: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: drypoint
• Dimensions: Image: 19.8 x 15.1 cm (7 13/16 x 5 15/16 in.); Plate: 21.1 x 16.3 cm (8 5/16 x 6 7/16 in.); Sheet: 43.4 x 30.2 cm (17 1/16 x 11 7/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Drypoint
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1956.646

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.