Eden Valley 1914

Lucien Pissarro painted this scene, titled ‘Eden Valley,’ with oil on canvas and a clear love for what he was doing. Look at those marks! I love the way he scumbles that green, putting all those little strokes down one by one, like it’s a kind of meditation. The overall surface texture is lovely – you can see the brushstrokes, thick in places, and it makes me want to touch it, feel the give of the paint. See how that foreground is so heavily worked? And then, by contrast, the hill in the background has a much smoother surface, which gives it a different kind of presence. It’s all in service to creating a sense of depth in the image. Pissarro was of course the son of Camille Pissarro, and you can see some of that impressionistic sensibility in the attention to light and color. But this is definitely its own thing. This little painting becomes a reminder that art is a conversation, that each artist builds upon what has come before and what is happening now.