Orchard in Blossom

In April 1876 the Impressionists held their second group show in Paris, and the critics were merciless. Albert Wolff, writing in the newspaper Le Figaro, told his readers that a gang of unfortunates had caught the disease of ambition and were flinging paint at canvas. Camille Pissarro was one of the painters he had in mind. While that argument played out in the city, Pissarro was where he usually was, out in the countryside at Pontoise, north-west of Paris, painting an apple orchard coming into blossom. He had settled in that farming town and would work its fields and orchards for years. Nothing happens in the picture. It is just trees, grass, and the cool light of a spring day, built up from countless small touches of the brush rather than clean drawn lines, which was exactly what the critics could not accept. Of the eight Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886, Pissarro was the only painter to show in every single one.