La Sarcleuse

Original etching signed and inscribed by Pissarro to Maximilien Luce
[1887] ? leaf: 20,5 x 30,5 cm; plate: 11 x 16,1 cm ? one leaf

Rare original etching by Camille Pissarro, titled "La Sarcleuse", one of 12 prints in 2nd state, after the artist's first state print and three or four proofs in 2nd state.
Like several other copies, it is marked in pencil "2e État imprimé par F. Jacques". Uniformly browned, scattered foxing, outer mar­gins sunned with small marginal tears.
Exceptionally inscribed by the art­ist to his great friend, the paint­er Maximilien Luce: "Pour l'ami M. Luce".
Another print provides context for this beautiful portrait, which is said to have been inspired by the sil­houette of a peasant woman in the fields at Eragny, in the Oise region. This rare and superb etching can be compared with the painting of the same name, Les Sarcleuses, Pon­toise, 1882, exhibited at the VIIth Im­pressionist exhibition.
This print is the only one bearing an inscription by the artist listed in his catalogue raisonné (Delteil no. 72), with only four listed (Musée du Luxembourg - now BnF -, New York Public Libary, Campbell Dodg­son, Alfred Beurdeley). The etching also dates from the year of their meeting in 1887, when Pissarro, along with George Seurat and Paul Signac, met Luce at the Salon de la Société des artistes indépendants. They immediately bonded over their ideas and artistic pursuits: "Luce's revolutionary convictions were confirmed when he met Ca­mille Pissarro [...] Both men had a taste for the working environment, industrial labor for the first, agricul­ture for the latter" (Xavier Mauduit). Through contact with Pissarro, Luce adopted the tonal division dear to the Neo-Impressionist movement Pissarro belonged to.