PIETTE Ludovic (1826-1878).

Lot 197
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Estimation :
2500 - 3000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 2 600EUR
PIETTE Ludovic (1826-1878).
5 L.A.S. "Piette", n.d., to Camille PISSARRO (one to Madame); 16 pages and a quarter in-8 (some soiling and slight defects). Interesting correspondence from the watercolourist to Pissarro, his close friend and fellow artist. June 4. "You forget the countryman you plunged in the ardent struggle. I would have been happy to know if you had been successful at the Salon - among the artists - I hear of nothing"... Only Fillonneau (Ernest) sends him twice a week his Salons, "a tissue of buffoonish contradictions"; the author turns with the wind like a weathervane. "Thus this year he praises the landscape painters who make their paintings on the spot [...] and now he praises Hanoteau and others who are content to stitch their paintings as if they were making pantouffles on a canvas"... He does not know if his submission to the Salon was accepted: "Whether I was accepted or not, my fate is the same, not very interesting. I am now content to smear small pieces of paper. It is less trouble, less labour and less material work: and it is less ruinous. In spite of that, I still pinch a little"... [Autumn]. He does not forget that Pissarro offered him half of his country home, but he could not accept and could not go to see him. "I have been punished for this because you have given me no news of you or your family. Write to me [...] if you have made your masterpiece this year! [...] As for me, I am exhausted. I have worked like never before. My eyes were even very tired"... He evokes with lyricism the autumnal landscapes. "When will we be able to have a good campaign together! Will it be next year - or this winter - to make snow effects! [Winter-early spring]. "I did some studying this winter in the coldest weather when the rivers were frozen. I could stand it easily, but this weather nails you to the house: it forces your bones and freezes your marrow. [...] I sent two watercolors to the hazard and I added two small studies on nature: one of this summer and another that I took back, that you know a wood with sun in the middle: the black background: children and rocks on the front"... He did not sell anything in Le Havre, and missed his sale in Bordeaux. "I am beginning to paint only for my own amusement, as I have not been able to paint seriously"... [Spring?]. His life is monotonous: "a savage like me must send you letters full of nihilism. I must be a century late because I don't walk unless it is like lady crayfish backwards. So my poor Pissarro you ask me if I work: yes. Do you work a lot? - Yes. With success? Alas! If my exhibition is ready? I have nothing but watercolors or drawings [...] I no longer have the courage to make large crusts: not only do they ruin me in frames and postage, not to mention the hassle of packing: but when they come back, I have to cover my rabbit huts with them, a solid but very expensive roof"... He hopes that it will be different for Pissarro: "you are happy with what you have done, it is a good omen. But I see that your ideas have changed and that you no longer hope to make a great painting in one go like a bell caster: I have never really understood that this was possible, although I agree with you that one can no longer suffer the same impression or make the spectator suffer it by continuing his work an infinite number of sessions where nature changes its aspects a hundred times without seeming to. How did COURBET do in front of the burial in Ornans: even if he could have seen his painting on the spot, freezing all those men like the famous fairy of the Sleeping Wood Palace, do you think he could have done his painting by coming back one year to settle at the same time in front of those men, and independently of the material impossibility, would he not have found at any hour on a different day a different impression according to even his digestion of each day ? It takes a tremendous power of intuition to fix one's irrevocable impression and to walk according to it: in making my little pieces of paper, I don't have to break my head. Gone with the wind"... [Paris]. "We went with Me Piette this morning to the arrival of the train on which Pissarro had promised to come: no Pissarro. I do not know if I will be able to see him. I will go this morning to see if I can find him"... A copy of a letter from Pissarro to Mme Piette is attached.
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