Painted just two years after the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition of 1886, Les ‘Coteaux de Thierceville, temps gris’ is an extraordinary example of Camille Pissarro’s Neo-Impressionist style. Although he only used Pointillism for less than five years, the technique represents an important part of his oeuvre.

Pissarro was continually looking to embrace and understand avant-garde theories from the next generation of artists. Gauguin and van Gogh both greatly admired his work, while Cézanne stayed and painted with him many times. In 1885 his son, Lucien, introduced him to the pointillist artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Pissarro had become disheartened with the sweeping style of Impressionism and was ready to experiment with the scientific practice of Pointillism. Instead of blending colours on the palette, Pointillism allows for colours to merge in the eye. Small touches of colour are applied directly onto the canvas, vibrating off and blending into each other to create a whole image.

‘Les Coteaux de Thierceville, temps gris’ is a tour de force. He uses the blue of the sky in the grass; the pink of the fields in the chateau, this is the very essence of Pointillism – the eye harmonising colour and form. The juxtaposing brushstrokes create a drama that contrasts against the calm colour palette, while the subtle gradations of hues in the clouds harmonise with the movement in the landscape.

Pissarro painted ‘Les Coteaux de Thierceville, temps gris’ while staying at his house in Éragny. Still working in the Impressionist style of en plein air, Pissarro carried his easel with him as he explored the landscape. Here, he depicts the neighbouring village of Thierceville with its rolling hills and chateau nestled in the background.

There are around 70 pointillist paintings in Pissarro’s body of work and over a third are in major public collections. Examples include ‘Vue de ma fenêtre, Éragny’, 1886 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford); ‘Maison de paysans, Éragny’, 1887 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney); ‘Gelée blanchel jeune pasanne faisant du feu’, 1888 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris); ‘Pruniers en fleur, Pointoise’, 1889 (Himeji City Museum of Art, Himeji); ‘Femme et chèvre à Éragny’, 1889 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).