Peasant House at Éragny

The date is painted into the lower corner, next to the signature: 1884. In April of that year the Pissarro family moved to Éragny-sur-Epte, a small village on the river Epte, north-west of Paris, and in August his wife Julie gave birth there to their youngest son, Paul-Émile, who later became a painter himself. This is one of the village farmhouses, low and white-walled, with pink tiles and two brick chimneys, half hidden behind a tree and a thick garden. A woman in a dark dress stands at the left, almost swallowed by the green. Money was short in the household in those years. The first person to own this painting after Pissarro was his Paris tailor, a Monsieur Molonet, who sold it to the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in January 1889.