Hoarfrost

The story

“Hoarfrost” was painted in 1873 near Pontoise. Camille Pissarro showed the painting at the first exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874. There it became a target of ridicule.

In “Hoarfrost” we see a ploughed field on a cold winter morning. The furrows are covered with white frost, and the long shadows of the trees lie across them like stripes. On the path on the right a peasant walks with a bundle of wood on his back. The sky is pale blue, and the sun barely warms the earth.

The critic Louis Leroy wrote a mocking article about the exhibition. Of this painting he said that it looked like palette scrapings laid on a dirty canvas. People did not understand why the shadows were blue and why the paint was applied with such visible strokes.

Today this is exactly what we like. Camille Pissarro saw that frost and shadows have colour, and he painted it boldly. Later he painted with similar boldness The Red Roofs, Côte Saint-Denis at Pontoise, Winter Effect.

Today “Hoarfrost” is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The painting people laughed at is now one of the most valued in the history of Impressionism.