Wooded Landscape at L'Hermitage, Pontoise (1879): Art, History and Details

Wooded Landscape at L'Hermitage, Pontoise (1879) 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:

Camille Pissarro depicted this view of Pontoise, the Parisian suburb where he lived at the time, using a range of etching techniques. He evoked the effects of natural light amid the shadowy forest by combining grainy aquatint with softground—a process that creates loose, painterly lines and tone. Although primarily known as painters, many of the Impressionists took up printmaking, developing new techniques to translate the effects of natural light. Pissarro, especially, experimented with etching, working extensively with the technique alongside Edgar Degas around the time this print was made.

Object facts

• Title: Wooded Landscape at L'Hermitage, Pontoise
• Date: 1879
• Creator attribution: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: softground, aquatint, and drypoint
• Dimensions: Platemark: 21.9 x 26.9 cm (8 5/8 x 10 9/16 in.); Overall: 26.9 x 35.6 cm (10 9/16 x 14 in.)
• Collection: PR - Aquatint
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2004.105

A detail from the museum

Pissarro made this print for the journal Le Jour et la nuit that he planned with Edgar Degas, but was never realized.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Glaubinger, Jane, "Generous Donors: The Print Club of Cleveland continues to enrich the collection.". Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 47, no. 07 (September 2007): 5-7.
• Salsbury, Britany. "A Lasting Impression: To mark the Print Club of Cleveland's centennial, a new exhibition highlights some of the group's major donations." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 59, no. 2 (March/April 2019): 34-35.

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.