The Lock at Pontoise (1872): Art, History and Details

The Lock at Pontoise (1872) 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 instrumental in developing the radically new Impressionist technique of painting quickly outdoors to capture fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. The rushing water and overcast sky in this view of a river lock near the artist’s home at Pontoise, a rural commune about 17 miles northwest of Paris, are rendered with rapid, broken brushstrokes of pure color. Painting directly on canvas without preliminary drawing, Pissarro may have executed this work in a single session. The shimmering surface of broken color conveys the sensation of natural, outdoor light.

Object facts

• Title: The Lock at Pontoise
• Date: 1872
• Creator attribution: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 76.8 x 105.7 x 11.4 cm (30 1/4 x 41 5/8 x 4 1/2 in.); Unframed: 53 x 83 cm (20 7/8 x 32 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1990.7

A detail from the museum

The river portrayed here is 212 miles (341 km) long.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, Claire. Camille Pissarro, le premier des impressionnistes. Paris: Hazan Editions, 2017.
• Galerie Georges Petit. Tableaux modernes, pastels, aquarelles, dessins. June 11, 1900.
• Caroline Durand-Ruel Godfroy, letter to Louise d’Argencourt, May 22, 1996, in CMA curatorial file.

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.