Edge of the Woods Near L'Hermitage, Pontoise, Camille Pissarro, 1879

Pissarro painted this monumental landscape when he was desperately poor and struggling to sell his paintings. It depicts a man slumbering in the sundappled backwoods of the hermitage, a rural village near pontoise, where the artist had been living since 1872. Restricting his pallette to pure hues, pissarro applied brushstrokes in systematic diagonal patterns, producing an effect that he likened to knitting. This canvas was included in the fourth impressionist exhibition of 1879. Object Type: painting. Genre: landscape painting. Date: 1879. Place of creation: France, 19th century. Dimensions: Framed: 166 x 204 x 16.5 cm (65 3/8 x 80 5/16 x 6 1/2 in.); Unframed: 125 x 163 cm (49 3/16 x 64 3/16 in.). Medium: oil on fabric. Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art. Edge of the Woods Near L'Hermitage, Pontoise, by Camille Pissarro, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951.356