Cottage at Storrington. Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944). 1911. Oil on canvas. H 40.5 x W 60 cm. Worthing Museum and Art Gallery. Accession number, 1975/722. Acquisition method: purchased from Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd. Kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
Storrington is a small town about ten miles south of Worthing in the South Downs, and this is a typical little South Downs cottage nestled in the hillside. The painting is still very much in Pissarro's own distinctive Post-Impressionist style, only a step away from painstaking pointillism, but looking much more spontaneous and vibrant. Interestingly, this was the very year in which he became one of the founder members of the Camden Town Group, although, according to Wendy Baron, he disliked the founder, Walter Sickert, "held views at odds with the ruling cliques....did not share the Camden Town Group's antagonism to the New English Art Club," and also wanted women to be included in the group. His preference was for landscapes focussing on rural rather than urban life, so it was inevitable that he would withdraw soon after it became part of the London Group in 1913. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
Baron, Wendy. "Pissarro, Lucien Camille (1863–1944), artist and printer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 11 August 2020.
Upstone, Robert. Painters of Modern Life: The Camden Town Group (part of "The Camden Town Group in Context" project). Tate. Web. 12 August 2020.
Created 12 August 2020