Eden Valley 1914

Lucien Pissarro made 'Eden Valley' with visible brushstrokes of greens, browns, and grays. I can almost feel the artist standing there, wrestling with the wind and light, trying to capture the essence of this rolling landscape. Look at how the paint is applied in small dabs, building up the form of the hills and trees. There is a sense of movement here. It makes you wonder what Pissarro was thinking about as he worked. I imagine it might have been the relationship of color to distance, since he was from the Impressionist family, and so it's also an image about painting itself. You can see this kind of close looking with someone like Cezanne too. Artists are in an ongoing conversation, you know, across time. Each mark on the canvas is like a little note in that conversation, open to interpretation and waiting for us to join in.